MY 

LIFE AND TIMES, 

1810-1899. 
JOHN B. AD GEE, D. D. 



RICHMOND, VA.: 
The Peesbyterian Committee of Publication. 



1 




COPYEIGHT, 1899, 
BY 

JAMES K. HAZEJs, Secretary of Publication. 



Pkinted by 
Whittet & Shepperson, 
Richmond, Va. 



LC Control Number 




tmp96 029083 



SECOND COPY, 



PEEFAOE. 



This Autobiography deserves, and doubtless will re- 
ceive, a hearty welcome at the hands of a discriminating 
and appreciative public. The reader will readily per- 
ceive by glancing over the Table of Contents that it is 
much more than a simple detail of private life ; it is the 
history of a very important and influential branch of the 
Church of Christ, in her struggles to maintain the faith 
once delivered to the saints, as that church was called, in 
the providence of God, to deliver her testimony during the 
century now rapidly drawing to its close. The author 
saw the light of day during the first decade of the nine- 
teenth century, and closed his eyes in death when but two 
years remained of the last decade. 

It was written, not during his youth and inexperience, 
nor yet in the middle period of life, when his energies 
were expended in the heat of battle, but after the hand of 
God had been laid upon him, and through physical infir- 
mities his soul had been called into the chamber of afflic- 
tion to commune in secret with the Father of mercies and 
the God of all grace. Thus, whilst rapidly nearing the 
haven of eternal rest, he entered upon this work of review- 
ing the storms of life. His course was almost run, the 
goal of a finished and successful race was just within his 
grasp, when he delivered this dying testimony, and, like 
the Psalmist, "showed thy strength unto this generation 
and thy power to every one that is to come." It must 
therefore impart a quickened interest to these pages when 
we reflect that they were written with eternity in view, 



4 



PREFACE. 



looking backward over the troubled past; also forward 
into a glorious future. When the light of nature was 
dying and the light of the celestial city was dawning, he 
paused in the midst of Jordan to erect this monument to 
the glory of God, as a token to those who should come 
after. That pen which he had so diligently used in life 
to propagate and defend the truth, and so tenaciously held 
in his closing hours, dropped from the faithful hand only 
when the last summons came, and the ink was scarcely 
dry when his spirit took its flight. And yet he had not 
fully accomplished all that was planned. "Chapter XI., 
Providential Dealings — Full Account of Revision," it 
will be noted, has been left "unwritten." The decree had 
gone forth, "Seal up those things . . . and write them 
not," 

Although this book was written during the closing 
years of its venerable author, yet his mental faculties had 
been most remarkably preserved ; so that we have the re- 
sult of his fully ripened powers, chastened by affliction 
and thoroughly disciplined by long years of faithful ap- 
plication and diligent use. This consideration has an im- 
portant bearing upon that very large section of the book, 
embracing two chapters on "The Controversies of My 
Times." The bent of his mind, the many years spent in 
the faithful, earnest, and diligent study of Ecclesiastical 
Polity, to the teaching of which in the Theological Semi- 
nary he had devoted many years in the very prime of life, 
furnished him with unusual qualifications for this calm 
review of those controversies. Truly, he seemed to have 
been qualified and called of God to write these chapters 
before he could say, "I have finished my course." This 
feature of the work has been noticed by others. 

The Rev. Dr. Hazen, of Richmond, Ya., has written: 
"Its chief value will be found in the light which it throws 
upon the critical periods of the history of the Presbyte- 



PREFACE. 5 

rian Church during the century. No man was more 
familiar with the notable controversies of the whole pe- 
riod, nor better able to give the history of them ; no man 
more fully understood the causes leading to the division 
of the old church; and no man was more active in the 
organization of the Southern Presbyterian Church and 
its agencies than was Dr. Adger ; and no one has given to 
all questions that have stirred the church, from its or- 
ganization to the present time, a more earnest and intelli- 
gent consideration than he. . . . So that there is need 
of just such a review of the history of those times, with 
the testimony of one who, as much as any one, was 
familiar with the inside history of the Church." 

The Rev. Dr. Palmer, of New Orleans, La., says of the 
work : "Four or five of the earlier chapters of the proposed 
volume were kindly submitted to my perusal by the 
revered author, which led me to urge upon him the com- 
pletion and publication of the work. Dr. Adger was dis- 
tinguished for the honesty and earnestness of his convic- 
tions ; and as the last years of his prolonged life were 
given to the task, the public has every assurance of his 
fidelity to the truth in the statement of all the issues in 
the controversies of his day. Its exceeding timeliness at 
the present juncture cannot be overestimated." 

Aside, however, from this feature of the volume, there 
will be a peculiar charm to many readers in turning these 
pages and tracing the developments of God's providence 
in the "Life" of the author, from his cradle to his grave. 
Surely, it will be edifying to the pious heart of the de- 
vout reader to note the windings of this subtle stream of a 
life so full of various incidents, of abounding grace, and 
of triumphant faith. To the young, it will be a tonic ; to 
the aged, a cordial ; to those still battling for truth, it will 
serve to gird them anew for the strife, with unalterable 
resolve to fight on till death shall secure a crown of vie- 



6 



PREFACE. 



tory over all falsehood, in the presence of him who is the 
King of Truth, the Head of the Church, and the Saviour 
of Sinners. There are many thousands of God's dear 
children shut in by the hand of bodily infirmity ; to such, 
what treasures of joy may be discovered in this unveiling 
of the life of one whom the Father loved, and whom there- 
fore he chastened. 

Jas. L. Martin. 

Palmyra, Mo. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEE I. Page. 

Our Ancestry, 9 

1689—1810. 

CHAPTER II. 

My Childhood and Early Youth, ..... 41 

1810—1822. 

CHAPTEE III. 

Academy and College Life, ...... 56 

1824—1828. 

CHAPTEE IV. 

Theological Seminary Life. — Our Marriage and Sail- 
ing to Smyrna. — My Wife's Ancestry, ... 70 
1829—1834. 

CHAPTEE V. 

Life Among the Armenians, ... 90 
1834—1846. 

CHAPTEE VI. 

Visit to America for a Year, but My Eeturn was Not 

Allowed, and What Followed, . . . .130 

1846— 1859. 

CHAPTEE VII. 

FrvE Years' Work as Missionary to the Negroes ln 

Charleston, 164 

1847— 1851. 



8 



CONTENTS. 



chapter vm: PAGE 

Retirement from Negro Work. — Dr. Girardeau Suc- 
ceeds. — Eyes Recuperate from Five Years' Farm 
LrFE. — Called to Theological Seminary, . . 201 
1852—1857. 

CHAPTER IX. 

Literary Work. — Writing. — Editing — Publishing. — 

Seminary Life. — Calvin's Institutes, . . .227 

CHAPTER X. 

Reminiscences of the War, . . . . . .327 

CHAPTER XL 

Proyidental Dealings. — Full Account of the Revision, 350 
(Unwritten.) 



CHAPTER XII.— Part I. 

The Controversies of My Times, 351 

1801—1861. 

CHAPTER Xn.— Part II. 

Controversies of Science with the Word of God, . . 412 
1884—1891. 



APPENDIX A. 

The Condition of Missions Among the Armenians ln the 

Year 1896, 667 



APPENDIX B. 
The Armenian Crisis ln Turkey. — The Massacre of 1894, 673 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



CHAP TEE I. 
Our Axcestry. 

1689-1810. 

MY TAT HER claimed that our ancestors fought at 
Derry. He was speaking to his daughter Jane 
Anne, who was ambitious of an honorable ancestry, and 
he said, "Your ancestors fought at Deny till they were 
lousy, and that is honor enough for you." He was not a 
man to make such a claim without knowing well the 
grounds on which he based it. He may have intended 
that this honor came to us in his father's line ; or that it 
came to us in his mother's line ; or that it came to us in 
both. He may also have intended that it came to us in 
the line of our mother's ancestors. It is possible that 
each one of these lines was represented among the heroic 
defenders of Londonderry. There are people of all three 
of these lines now in both Antrim and Derry. My grand- 
mother was a Crawford, and she had connections living 
in Columbia who could trace the family history back 
through five or six generations. This might bring them 
nearly or quite back to the time Londonderry was be- 
sieged. Macaulay tells us that the inhabitants were 
Anglo-Saxon, but with the Englishry, as he calls them, 
were a good many Scotch. At the commencement of the 
siege, whilst the authorities hesitated, thirteen young ap- 
prentices, all of Scotch descent, took on them to close the 
gates against a detachment from the Irish army who had 
appeared and demanded entrance. That night messen- 
gers were sent to the Protestants of the neighboring 
counties to come to the city's defence. Hundreds of horse 
and foot obeyed immediately. These of course were 



10 



MY EIFE AND TIMES. 



Scotch people as well as English, and we may be sure 
there were Crawfords among them, for the garrison 
within shortly became seven thousand arms-bearing men. 
"But," says Macaulay (Vol. III., p. 153), a the whole 
world could not have furnished seven thousand men bet- 
ter qualified to meet a terrible emergency, with clear 
judgment, dauntless valor, and stubborn patience. They 
were all zealous Protestants." He also says (page 113), 
"They were indeed not all of one country, nor of one 
church;" but, according to him, "one common antipathy 
bound all these Protestants together — an antipathy to the 
Irish race and the Popish religion." 

But in 16S9 amongst the reinforcements assembled at 
Chester under Schomberg for the relief of Londonderry 
and ready to depart for Ireland there were thousands of 
one class of men who had more of the antipathy just men- 
tioned than either English or Scotchmen. Macaulay tells 
us (page 325) that four regiments accompanied Schom- 
berg from amongst the French Kefugees, who fled to 
London after the Revocation of the Edict of Xantes. 
These were three regiments of foot soldiers and one of 
cavalry. The cavalry regiment was raised by Schomberg 
himself. The foot regiments were raised chiefly by the 
Marquess of Ruvigny. His abilities, his experience, and 
his munificent kindness made him the undisputed chief 
among the refugees. He was himself eighty years of age, 
but his two sons, both men of eminent courage, devoted 
their swords to the service of William. The younger son, 
who bore the name of Caillemote, was appointed colonel 
of one of the Huguenot regiments of foot. The two other 
regiments of foot were commanded by La Melloniere and 
Cambon, officers of high reputation. 

It is respecting these French exiles that Macaulay says 
they were among the best troops under Schomberg's com- 
mand. He says (page 337) that "the dislike with which 
the most zealous English Protestant regarded the House 
of Bourbon and the Church of Rome was a lukewarm 
feeling when compared with that inextinguishable hatred 
which glowed in the bosom of the persecuted, dragooned, 
expatriated Calvinist of Languedoc. The Irish had 
already remarked that the French heretic neither gave 



OUE AXCESTKY. 



11 



nor took quarter." Accordingly we find that at the bat- 
tle of the Boyne, where William commanded, when 
Schomberg gives the word, and Solmes' Blues move into 
the river followed by Londonderry and Enniskillen, it is 
Caillemot who crosses next at the head of his long column 
of French Refugees, followed by the main body of Eng- 
lish infantry and the Danes. 

~No^Y we know that some five hundred thousand of 
Louis' best subjects fled to Holland and to England when 
he revoked the Edict of Xantes. Many of them settled 
in London. These exiles carried with them remarkable 
industry, economy, and peculiar skill in various mechani- 
cal arts. Many of them were French manufacturers of 
various branches. It can hardly be doubted that some of 
Schomberg' s soldiers would remain in Ireland after the 
close of the war by the flight of James to Paris. These 
would link to Ireland some of their brethren whom they 
had left behind in London. How natural that many of 
these should prefer to the crowded streets of London a 
residence in the beautiful region of Xorth Ireland, when 
they and their brethren who had served under King Wil- 
liam would be sure to find a warm welcome among their 
English and- Scotch fellow Protestants. And how natural 
that thus many more should be attracted thither from 
France itself to set up silk and linen factories in Ulster. 

The Rev. Dr. Henry Quigg, a Presbyterian minister 
of Conyers, Ga., is a native of the Xorth of Ireland, and 
writes me that he heard a great deal about the siege of 
Derry from his mother when he was a boy. Her people 
were engaged in that terrible conflict. Dr. Quigg has 
long been an earnest student of the history of Ulster. He 
is a very high authority in respect to Irish antiquity, and 
he says that "it is very certain that Schomberg, who fell 
at the battle of the Boyne, brought over a large body of 
French Protestant soldiers, who fought the battles of 
William III., of glorious fame and immortal memory, in 
Ireland. Very many of these French remained in Ire- 
land, as they had no country to call their own." "The 
persecuted Protestants came to Ulster in great numbers 
and established manufactories of various kinds in the 
counties of Antrim, Down, and Derry. Leister became 



12 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



the gathering ground of those persecuted for conscience* 
sake in the different parts of Europe, but specially in 
France and Holland. They engaged in all kinds of man- 
ufacturing, which I arn satisfied embraced linen as well as 
silk." 

Dr. Quigg speaks of the settlement of the refugees in 
Ulster about two hundred years ago. We might naturally 
expect to find that some descendants of these people should 
still be found in that province. Their names, especially, 
and their other characteristics should point them out. It 
is thus in South Carolina with the descendants of the 
Huguenots. Accordingly there is in Ulster at this day 
a considerable number of persons whose name has as fully 
the Trench shape as the well-known name Huger. But 
in our country neither that French name nor many others 
like it, as for instance Legare, have retained the French 
pronunciation. It is just so with the name of the persons 
in Ireland whom I refer to. It is spelt in three differ en t 
ways, all pronounced exactly alike, but not pronounced 
in French fashion. All this looks as if the Ulster people 
were in this case handling the name of foreigners. The 
name referred to I have never found either in English or 
Scotch history. It looks distinctively like a French name, 
and it may point out the descendants of French people. 
It certainly does not point out the descendants of English 
people, nor yet the descendants of Scotch people, and 
certainly those it does point out are not the descendants 
of the Irish. In Ulster this name is sometimes spelt 
Edger, Adgar, Adger, but it is always pronounced one 
way. The argument then for our partial French origin 
stands thus. It seems to be certain that two hundred 
years ago there were many French Protestants settled in 
Ulster. It also seems to be certain that they established 
linen manufactures there. It seems to be probable that 
there are many descendants of these people there who still 
retain their French name, and in some degree their blood. 
But it is absolutely certain that after the lapse of eighty 
years, that is, at least one hundred and twenty years ago, 
there was a linen manufactory and bleaching green 
owned and operated in Dunean, County Antrim, Prov- 
ince of Ulster, and that the owner stamped that French 



OUR ANCESTRY. 



13 



name upon the linen lie produced. Xow that man was 
certainly my grandfather, James Adger, and to make the 
conclusion still more complete and positive, my father is 
known to have claimed that his ancestors came over from 
France to Ireland. He said to my sister Jane Anne, "My 
people were not Scotch ; they were French." 

The fourth and the fifth statements just made I cannot 
set aside. The fifth is testimony from ample intelligence 
and unimpeachable veracity. Yet, although one element 
of the paternal blood was really French, it always paid 
due honor to its sister element, which was Scotch-Irish. 
I remember well how great was my father's admiration 
of William II. Crawford, of Georgia. He was certainly a 
very great man, filled many important offices for the State 
of Georgia, and but for a coalition in the House of Repre- 
sentatives at Washington, between the friends of his op- 
posing candidates, Clay and Adams, he would have been 
elected President of the United States. He was beyond 
all comparison my father's preference, which I have often 
heard him express. But no doubt the name and blood 
of the Crawf ords had something to do with this. 

It was in the year 1838 that my father took me and 
my brother James to the north of Ireland. The places I 
remember best are Belfast, The Giants' Causeway, Ban- 
clallstown, and eight miles from Bandallstown, Dunean. 
I remember also Toome Bridge, one mile from Dunean, 
with its little hotel where the sign that hung out in front 
had on it the picture of a bloody hand cut off at the wrist. 
But I do not remember what chieftain's hand or what 
bloody scene it represented. Toome Bridge is famous for 
its eels, and riding past there in the morning we engaged 
lodgings for the night and supper. Such a supper of 
Irish eels and Irish potatoes, both of finest quality, I 
never ate before or since. But my father's main object 
was that we might go and visit our grandfather's grave at 
Dunean. 

My grandfather was, as said before, a linen manufac- 
turer. He had his bleaching green at Dunean. The orig- 
inal stamp which he put on the linen he made is now in 
the possession of Ellison Adger Smyth, given to him by 
my sister J ane Anne. It is made of a plate of solid brass, 



14 MY LIFE AND TIMES. 

into which are cut the names James Adger, Dunean, An- 
trim, and it has a nicely turned wooden handle. This 
stamp put into blue ink was then pressed by the hand 
upon every piece of linen cloth. There is a memorandum 
on a little, old yellow fragment of paper, by whom written 
does not appear, which reads thus, "James Adger died 
March the 25th day, half an hour after six in the morn- 
ing, aged 41 years, Died March 25th, 1783." On the 
back of this little memorandum is written in my father's 
hand, "When J. Adger died." He "left his widow well 
to do." These are the names of his children : Jane, who 
married Charles Kidd ; Betsey, and three sons, William, 
James and Robert. 

This whole visit of mine to Ireland, including Dunean, 
and the grandfather's grave, is indistinctly impressed on 
my memory. I had left my work at Smyrna, which was 
uppermost in my mind. Moreover, I was looking forward 
to a separation for years from my wife, whose health re- 
quired her to return with my parents to Charleston. I 
prefer, therefore, to borrow what follows from the nar- 
rative of my nephew, Ellison Adger Smyth, who visited 
the home of our ancestors last summer (1896). He says, 
"After leaving the railroad station at Randallstown, and 
seeing no teams, I turned back to ask questions of a police- 
man. Quite a crowd had gotten off the train, and not 
finding the officer, I went up to two men who had gotten 
off, and asked about Moneynick and then about Dunean 
and the Adgers. The elder gentleman, whose name is 
Frederick McCullough, who was well-dressed and ap- 
peared to be a man of culture and refinement, said he 
lived in Dunean village, and his mother was an Adger, 
and his father was the late rector of the Episcopal Church 
at Dunean. I said to him, 'My mother was an Adger/ 
'Indeed V he said, 'and how so V I told him, and he said, 
'Yes,' he knew some of the family lived in the Southern 
States. He urged me to stay all night with him, and 
offered to show me all around, and hunt up my kin. The 
other man, aged about thirty-five, was John C. Stewart, 
who had married McCullough' s sister's daughter, a grand- 
daughter of an Adger. In reply to my question McCul- 
lough said the name was spelt Ad gar, Edger and Adger, 



OUB ANCESTRY. 



15 



all one family, and all pronounced as we do. I hired a 
jaunting ear. and Mr. Stewart went with us, first to 
Aloneyniek. and thence to Dunean. There we visited, 
first, the Presbyterian church and graveyard, but found 
no tombstones over seventy-live years old. The church 
was a modern building in tine order, and Stewart said 
here the great Dr. Cook was ordained. TTe went on then 
to r he Episcopal church, a venerable stone edifice, but 
much smaller, and Stewart, who is a Presbyterian, says 
the congregation is small. The church-yard is very large, 
and has been the burial place for many generations. Here 
on one side, near the church. I found the Aclger burial 
ground. Xear the centre of the group I found this : 

HERE LIES THE BODY OF 

JAMES ADGEK, 
who Died March '25th, 17S3, 

AGED -41 TEAES. 

"The stone is erect, in good condition, the marble fine, 
seven or eight inches thick. The grave is sodded over, 
and in good repair. The old graveyard is much over- 
grown with grass and tall weeds, and we had to make our 
way through this growth in order to find the stone which 
we sought. The figure S in the year 17 S3 is the only part 
in the inscription hard to make out. There were some 
weeds on the grave itself ; these I cut off, and left the 
grave in good shape." 

He adds. "On one side of your grandfather's grave was 
an old stone to -John Edger, who died 1701. aged sixty- 
three years: next to that Robert Edger. 1702. On the 
other side of your grandfather's tomb is one to John 
Edger, of Oargan, 1575. aged ninety years, and his wife 
Xancy. 1855. aged ninety-one years."' 

Here. then. Ellison Adger Smyth found two grave- 
stones bearing the name of Edger, one of which lacks only 
four and the other only rive of being two hundred years 
old. One of these men died at the age of sixty-three ; 
perhaps the other may have been of the same age. Xow, 
the Revocation of the Edict of Xantes was in 1685, six- 
teen years before the death of one, and seventeen before 
the death of the other of these men. Thev mav both of 



16 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES 



tliem have been Huguenot refugees, who fought at the 
siege of Derry in 1689, and subsequently with William 
of Orange at the battle of the Boyne. My nephew said 
Mr. McCullough laughed at the idea of his mother's peo- 
ple being French. He said they were all from Scotland. 
But Mr. McCullough might easily be mistaken on this 
point. How many people in the upper part of South Car- 
olina could tell where their ancestors were living two hun- 
dred and twenty years ago ? If I should ask any one of 
them of more than ordinary intelligence to tell me whether 
his great-great-great-grandfather in 1675 lived in Eng- 
land, or in Scotland, or in Wales, or in France, or in Hol- 
land, he would certainly laugh more than Mr. McCullough 
did because I was asking him what he would consider 
such a silly question. I cannot suppose that much more 
historical intelligence prevails to-day in the north of Ire- 
land than we find here in the north part of South Carolina 
amongst our Scotch-Irish population. 

My nephew next sought for the old Dunean Flax Mill. 
He says, "The little Stone Mill, built partly of stone and 
partly of concrete, is still there. The name given it by 
everybody is 'The Old Mill.' The place where the wheel 
stood can be pointed out, and the tail race is separate and 
distinct from the stream ; it is arched over and the road 
passes over it. and over the bridge across what they call 
Dunean River, but what we would call a creek. The peo- 
ple all say that the old tail race has been there for over 
a hundred years. It is still left undisturbed. Xo water 
passes through it. but it leads to the river backing up 
under the mill building. It is eight or ten feet wide, and 
a man can walk under it by stooping.'' 

"The house is now occupied by Patrick Mclntyre, a 
blacksmith. He showed me the old dam site and tail race, 
and where the wheel was placed, and said that his father 
before him had lived in this building for over sixty 
years. " 

Moneynick, where my father was born Xovember 2, 
1777, is now a very small hamlet, with hardly a decent 
dwelling house, although it has two little flax mills, spin- 
ning the flax, but not weaving. They are run by steam, 
and the steam is got by burning the straw of the plant. 



OUR ANCESTRY. 



17 



Dnnean is still a respectable village. My nephew says, 
"It has two churches, a school-house, and one store and 
a settlement of farmers' houses built of stone. In fact, I 
did not see a wooden building in Ireland that I remember. 
Most are stone or concrete. Some families live there, 
but spelling the name Edger." 

His account of the Old Mill at Dunean ends with this 
statement, "All the linen sheetings, which are the plain 
linen goods, not table cloths, that I have seen, are stamped 
in blue with a little hand stamp, like the one I have. For 
years, however, printed tickets with pictures on them 
have been gradually introduced for all cloths. The linen 
mills and most of the cotton mills have stone floors, and 
the help I saw, fully seventy-five per cent, were bare- 
footed in the mill." 

After the death of my grandfather, his widow married 
again. Her second husband's name was Robert Rodgers. 
He had been the foreman of the Dunean Mill. He 
soon ran through her property, being too fond of whis- 
key. 

In a little more than ten years, viz., 1793, our grand- 
mother left Ireland for this country, accompanied by her 
two sons James and Robert, her daughter Betsey, also her 
intemperate husband Rodgers, and their four little girls, 
Esther, Margaret, Mary and Isabella, the last named be- 
ing an infant. They had a very long passage, as was 
usual in those days, namely, sixteen weeks and three days, 
arriving in ]\ T ew York January, 1794. The other son, Wil- 
liam Adger, had married young and emigrated previously, 
coming to South Carolina. His wife's maiden name was 
McCrory, which is the Irish or Scotch-Irish way of writ- 
ing Rodgers or Rogers. I do not know, but suspect that 
my grandmother's second husband belonged to that 
family. 

The voyage from the other side of the Atlantic was a 
very different affair one hundred years ago from what it 
is now. Inferior ships, inferior navigators, very far in- 
ferior accommodations for passengers, and a long passage 
always, and great suffering. Food and water always ran 
short, and sometimes gave out entirely. I heard my 
father tell of a pig being slaughtered on the deck and how 



IS 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES 



a rain-storm coming on soon after, all efforts were gladly 
made to catch every drop that fell, and some of the water 
they were thankful in their great extremity to drink 
showed signs of the pig's blood, and bristles too. 

On the third day after their arrival in New York the 
infant Isabella died and was buried in what used to be 
Dr. Spring's church-yard, the old "Brick Church," where 
now, I think, the Xew York City Post Office stands. Of 
the other three little girls, who all lived and grew up, 
Esther married in Fairfield District, S. C, where her 
brother William lived. At his house all three of them 
seem to have spent some time while children, or growing 
up girls. Esther's husband was William Herron, a re- 
spectable planter. She raised a large family and lived to 
be ninety-four or ninety-five years old. The other two 
girls. Margaret and Mary, went to a wealthy Uncle 
Kodgers of theirs, living at Kinderhook, Columbia 
county, Xew York, and there they were married, Mar- 
garet to Charles Whiting and Mary to James Clark, both 
respectable merchants and partners in business. Mar- 
garet lived to be more than seventy, her only daughter 
married an eminent lawyer of Albany, X. Y., named 
Reynolds, and has raised a large family. Mary lived to 
be about as old as her sister Esther, and has two daughters 
still living at this date (Xovember, 1S96), both widows, 
one, Mrs. Shaw, in Xew York City, and the other, Mrs. 
Bain, living at Kinderhook. 

My L ncle Robert Adger died while yet comparatively 
a young man. He had two daughters. Xeither survives 
at this day. My father took them both into his family 
when they were left orphans. The older one married my 
cousin William Ellison. 

My uncle, William Adger, became wealthy, raised a 
large family and died an old man. Some of his descend- 
ants bearing the name of Adger are living in Louisiana, 
on the Red River. 

Their sister Betsey married Dr. Charles Whitlaw, a 
celebrated physician and naturalist, whose public lectures 
on botany possibly some few very old people in Charles- 
ton may now remember. She died early, and lies buried, 
I believe, in the Scotch church-yard (First Presbyterian), 
Charleston. 



OUE ANCESTRY. 



19 



Having brought this history clown so far, I must go 
back (asking my grandmother Rodgers' pardon), and 
speak more fully of her. Her maiden name was Margaret 
Crawford. I have been told by one who knew of her when 
she was my grandfather Adger's widow (Mr. James 
Black, of County Antrim) that she bore the title all 
through the country of ''the handsome widow." Hand- 
some or not, I know she was godly, which is of far greater 
consequence. How often in my early childhood have I 
seen her at secret prayer in her bed-room at my father's 
house in Charleston. Xo doubt I was one of those who 
inherited a blessing thus. My father, I am convinced, 
was her darling son, and her Jemmy, as I often heard her 
call him, must have been truly a good boy. 

The Xew York to which so many North-Irish emi- 
grated was, even one hundred years ago, very different 
from what now bears that name. John Stephenson, in- 
ventor of the American horse-car, who is just my age, and 
was born, therefore, about 1810, says the ''difference is 
amazing, and it looks like a fairy tale." He says that in 
his boyhood ''Xew York City consisted of just a few 
small villages. The boys of one hamlet fared badly if 
found within the precincts of another, and on Saturday 
afternoons the boys of two rival hamlets would face each 
other on either side of a pit or cut and fight one another 
with stones." Such was the place to which my grand- 
mother, with her family of seven children, the oldest boy 
some fifteen years old, came in January, 1791. She had 
lost all, or nearly all, her property. A little shop she 
essayed to keep, ''her Jemmy" being her mainstay. After 
awhile, as I have learned from a letter of my father's ad- 
dressed to his brother AA^illiam in South Carolina, Robert 
Rogers reformed, and then it seems that he and my grand- 
mother had a grocery store, and Jemmy went to a trade. 
AYhereabouts "the little shop" or ''the grocery store" stood 
cannot be said ; very probably in that one of the hamlets 
lowest down the town. Doubtless they have each been 
succeeded by some eight or ten-story building, which con- 
stitutes the half of a magnificent square. In those days 
Xew York was in no respect superior to Charleston — de- 
cidedly, if I am not greatly mistaken, its inferior. Alany 



20 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES 



circirmstances combined to send Xew York to the top ; 
among them the tariff policy of the United States govern- 
ment, and the course of the Gnlf Stream. 

It was probably not very long that my father remained 
with his mother at the little shop ; thence he went to 
learn the carpenter's trade. He did not like it. Many 
years ago I had pointed out to me a wooden building two 
or three stories high on Broadway on the roof of which 
he was at work when a lad, so ill at ease in that life that 
he was ready sometimes, as he said, to throw himself down 
to the ground. One day they were doing some carpen- 
ters work on a ship in the harbor. Another ship was 
■coming up from some foreign land. He was standing 
with other lads for a moment looking at this vessel, with 
his coat off and his sleeves rolled up, and one of the boys 
carrying a bucket full of tar behind him managed to im- 
merse his hands and arm up to the elbow. It turned out 
that a friend of the family, a Mr. James Henderson, was 
passenger on that vessel and he insisted on my father's 
quitting that business, and got him a position with some 
merchant. That merchant, however, soon failed in busi- 
ness. And so Jemmy, who had been told not to open the 
front door, set himself down disconsolately on the sill of 
the door. Mr. Lang, a friend of his, came along and 
inquired, "Why don't you open the door V' Being an- 
swered, he said, "I was afraid of that." It was he who 
introduced Jemmy to old Mr. Bailey, who became a father 
to him. After him. in gratitude, he had me, who was his 
first-born son, named. Mr. Bailey was a dealer in hard- 
ware, and seems to have had a brass foundry, and I have 
heard my father say, pointing to a pair of old-fashioned 
hrass fire-dogs, which had a little curved ornamentation 
in their front, that he remembered what a grand thing 
that was held to be when Mr. Bailey first invented that 
pattern. 

Some five or six years passed and my father had 
learned the business of dealing in hardware, which I have 
heard him say might be called a "regular and difficult 
trade/' There came a ship from England with a cargo 
chiefly of that kind of goods, belonging to. or in charge of, 
an Englishman whose name I cannot recall. I suppose 



OUR ANCESTRY. 



21 



possibly lie was what is called a supercargo, but lie proved 
incompetent, and so it fell to Mr. Bailey to interpose, and 
he sent the vessel to Charleston with this Englishman in 
charge, but my father in charge of him. That errand de- 
cided his plans of life. It was in 1802. He never re- 
turned to live in Yew York. 

What a different family history had ours been had he 
not been sent to Charleston with that cargo and that super- 
cargo. "With his energy and judgment and integrity, had 
he remained in Yew York City and begun to rise when 
Yew York began, he must, with the favor of Providence,, 
have been one of her richest millionaires. But what then 
had become of all of us ( 

Having sold out the cargo, he was going up to Fairfield 
to visit his brother William, who had long been settled 
there as a planter. The journey from the city was to be 
on horseback — perhaps the horse was one that had been 
bought for his brother. But this young man, so lately 
from Yew York, had never learned much about horse- 
back riding. So he mounted with stirrups rather too long 
for him, but he did not mind that, and started off on a 
pretty lively gait. Old Mr. McCreight, of Winnsboro, 
who was his travelling companion, overtook him after he 
had reached the outskirts of the town, and perceived that 
he was riding uncomfortably, but mischievously refrained 
from suggesting the necessary shortening, and my father 
rode on a long time, and became tired enough. I am not 
sure if it was all day or the whole journey that he made 
in this fix. I fear I have never forgiven the old 
Winnsboro citizen for this unfriendly dealing with the 
stranger. 

It was during this visit to his brother that one day he 
saw Miss Sarah Elizabeth Ellison riding on horseback 
from her father's plantation into Winnsboro. Hers was 
a handsome face and figure, and she wore a stylish beaver 
riding hat. and the young gallant Yew York Irishman 
was done for. 

It was a case of love at first sight with my father, and 
I am sure from what my mother has told me that she also 
was interested at first sight. But when he called to make 
his formal proposal he met with an unexpected obstacle. 



22 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



The young lady's father had married a second wife, who 
proved not a good step-mother. Miss Sarah was in the 
house, but happened to be upstairs inspecting and repair- 
ing some damage done by a tame squirrel which had got 
into her drawer, and Step-mother would not let the young 
man's name be announced to her. Thus, placing herself 
between the two parties, she kept the young man mean- 
while in ignorance of the real state of the case. After 
waiting a reasonable time to see his lady love, but in vain, 
he got vexed and started off, being heard to say, "If I 
cannot marry where affection calls, I shall go to "New 
York and marry where duty requires." So he took him- 
self off in a hurry right down to Charleston. The young 
lady became aware of her danger, wrote to her brother 
John, then a merchant in Charleston, and explained to 
him the part her step-mother had acted, and bid him go 
to see the young man and explain matters. He soon 
found him, and it is said the two young men took a walk 
together around the Tobacco Inspection Building, then 
famous in Charleston, and it was not long before he was 
up in Winnsboro again, and the matter was peacefully 
and pleasantly settled. 

The tobacco crop was then a very important matter in 
Charleston commerce. From many miles around the city 
they used to roll in the big hogsheads, each drawn by one 
horse. It became necessary that there should be a public 
inspection of tobacco. An immense shed was erected 
along Hudson street, running from King to Meeting, and 
covering all the ground now occupied by the Citadel. 
This was sometimes filled with hogsheads of tobacco wait- 
ing for inspection and sail. It was around this capacious 
mart that our two young men took their interesting walk 
whilst the brother skillfully smoothed away the offence 
his sister had unwittingly given. 

My Mother's Ancestry. 

Let me now turn and attempt to give an account of my 
mother's ancestry on her father's side. I have before me 
two documents containing testimony from two grandsons 
of my great-grandfather, William Ellison, to-wit: John, 
the son of Robert Ellison, and William, the son of John 



OUE AXCESTRY. 



23 



Ellison. These two grandsons were men of about the 
same age, and they had equal opportunities to know of 
what they spoke. The former, John Ellison, was a man 
of excellent sense and strict integrity ; the other also was 
a man of high intelligence, a lawyer by profession and 
entirely worthy of confidence. They differ on some 
points which only establishes their truthfulness. The 
former gives his testimony through a niece. She is an 
educated lady, who immediately recorded all his state- 
ments, except two, and afterwards got him to repeat them. 
But my cousin William's statements are made from mem- 
ory by one of his daughters, Elizabeth Martha, in one of 
the aforesaid documents. She also was a lady of high in- 
telligence. Her father had a family Bible in which his 
father had written a "history of the family in many 
pages." This was consumed when his dwelling was burnt. 
She claims to remember very distinctly the facts of this 
narrative, but not the dates ; but she says her father had 
given great attention to the family history, learning it 
both from the record in the Bible and from conversations 
with his father. 

Before I proceed to examine these two lines of testi- 
mony, I submit two preliminary statements furnished 
me by two cousins, devoted to antiquarian researches. 
The first one of these is interesting, though it does not 
claim any great importance. It runs thus : "In Collins 
Peerage of England, edition of 1768, Vol. VII., p. 357, 
there is the record of the marriage of Robert Ellison, 
Esq., of Hepburn, County Durham, England, to a titled 
lady, between 1690-1700, the precise date not given. 
This is valuable as showing that there were Ellisons in 
Durham. And also the name Robert is significant." 

The second statement is based on a reference to "Los- 
sing's Field Book of the Revolution," where mention is 
made of two Ellisons, John and William, who do not 
seem, however, to belong to our immediate family. Their 
home was !N"ew Windsor, ]\ T ew Jersey. My informant 
received a letter from one of their descendants in Xew 
Jersey, which says, "The names Andrew, William, 
Robert and John were peculiar to the Ellison family of 
Durham, and in the old cemetery there you would 



24 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



find these names on the old tombstones." He had lately 
visited the place. His grandfather was an Andrew Elli- 
son. Here we have a statement that is direct and very 
important. 

I now introduce an item of Uncle John Ellison's testi- 
mony confirmatory of the statement above given. He 
tells his niece, "Our forefathers went from England to 
Ireland during one of the persecutions." Thus John be- 
gins his account, not with his grandfather, William Elli- 
son, in 1744, but with our forefathers. Yet when he 
speaks of his grandfather's settlement in Ireland, he 
places it in County Antrim. 

Cousin William Ellison, who was popularly known as 
Lawyer Billy Ellison, practised law in Camden, and also 
in Chester, before he settled at what became his life's 
home, on Dutchman's Creek, Fairfield county. He be- 
gins his testimony, as it is written by his daughter, thus r 
"I have many times heard from my father that the Elli- 
sons were landed proprietors with considerable property 
living on the borders between two counties in Ireland, but 
the names of their residences I have forgotten, though it 
was mentioned in that Bible. They were called Lairds." 
I take it these two counties were Derry and Antrim. 

Uncle John's statement about our forefathers may be 
very easily understood as running back a half century or 
more. This would bring us to the time of the siege of 
Londonderry in 1689. Macaulay tells us (Vol. III., page 
115) how, when the Irish army were first seen approach- 
ing, and thirteen Scotch apprentices had seized the keys 
and closed the gates of the terrified city, "messengers 
were sent, under cover of the following night, to the 
Protestant gentlemen of the neighboring counties. . . . 
The Protestants of the neighborhood promptly obeyed the 
summons of Londonderry. Within forty-eight hours hun- 
dreds of horse and foot came by various roads to the city." 
Thus the number of men within the walls was increased 
to seven thousand. I would be glad to know positively 
what I am quite prepared to believe, that our Ellison 
"forefathers" were among the first to give this response. 
But of another thing I do feel very sure, namely, that 
after Major Kobert Ellison had given his daughter Sarah 



OUR ANCESTRY. 



25 



Elizabeth to the young man who had asked for her, he 
would often make him sit down while he told him not only 
all about what he himself had done and suffered in the 
Revolutionary war, but also all that he had heard his 
father tell about what had been done by our "forefathers" 
and others at the siege of Londonderry and the battle of 
the Boyne. He would thus be all the better prepared to 
say to his grown-up daughter, when he had one, that it 
was honor enough for her that her "forefathers" had 
fought at Derry. 

Lawyer William's daughter says, '"I think that our 
great-grandparents were dead when the Irish rebellion 
commenced." Probably they were. The Irish rebellion 
was in 1798. They removed from Ireland to America 
fifty-four years before the Irish rebellion and very prob- 
ably were dead when that event occurred. But she goes 
on to say, "There was an elder brother who was the head 
of the family and took part in that rebellion. He was 
executed when Lord Fitzgerald died, and the family 
property was confiscated by the English government." 
Here again, of course, is another mistake. Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald did head the Irish rebellion in 1798, but the 
elder brother must have lived long before 1798 or 1744 
either. Here comes in an item of Uncle John's testimony, 
who told his niece that "some of our forefathers engaged 
in the wars against William the Conqueror." Of course, 
here is a lapsus linguae of the old man or a lapsus pennae 
of the young lady. He meant to say William of Orange. 
But the mistake is of slight importance, while the fact 
which is stated is very important. Some of our fore- 
fathers fought for William the Third in his Irish battles, 
but some of these forefathers of ours were loyal to King 
James and fought for him. It is generally so ; war 
divides families, puts brothers on one side and brothers on 
the other — equally honorable it frequently is to be on 
either side. It is even quite possible that some of our 
forefathers who did not actually fight for King James 
sympathized strongly with the men of that side; har- 
bored them, concealed them when pursued, and so became 
involved actually, though not formally, in rebellion 
against King William, so that their landed estates and 



26 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES, 



other property were all confiscated by King William's 
government. But here comes a positive statement attrib- 
uted to "Lawyer William." "My father told me that his 
uncle, who was executed, was a man of culture and educa- 
tion." Well, her father did not say he was executed for 
taking part in the Irish rebellion. He was too intelligent 
and well-read to have made such a misstatement about that 
rebellion. Moreover, it was not possible that any uncle of 
his could have been in that rebellion. His uncles and his 
grandfather were all off to America fifty-four years before 
the rebellion. His daughter did not correctly understand 
what he said. He must have used the word uncle in a 
very wide sense ; he might have meant to say that some 
grand uncle of his amongst "those forefathers" of whom 
Uncle John speaks, a man of culture and education, was 
executed for being somehow drawn in amongst the op- 
posers of William of Orange. 

j^ow we are prepared to hear what these two grandsons 
tell about the emigration from Ireland to Pennsylvania 
and to South Carolina. 

First, we have from the written document of Lawyer 
Billy Ellison's daughter, the following statement : "My 
grandfather was only fifteen years of age when they enii- 
gratedjto America and settled in Pennsylvania. He. with 
his brother Robert, came to South Carolina, and bought 
lands in Fairfield District, and lived there until they 
died. My grandfather married his first wife. Mary 
Byers, the sister of Mrs. Eachel Milligan. of Charleston ; 
she died a few days after the birth of an infant daughter, 
Mary Byers Ellison. Mrs. Robert Ellison took the infant 
and nursed it with her son John Ellison, nearly the same 
age. Previous to moving to the up-country, my grand- 
father John married again in Charleston, his second wife 
Elizabeth McCormick, my father's mother. My father 
was known as Lawyer Billy Ellison. My grandfather 
survived his second wife some years, and married a third 
wife, who was a widow, Mrs. Harrison, the mother of 
Cousin Mary Ellison, whom you know as the wife of your 
Uncle William Ellison, who lived at the old [Robert] 
Ellison homestead in Fairfield District. Neither my 
father nor his sister [half-sister. Mary Byers Ellison, 



OUR AXCESTRY. 



27 



wife of Austin Peay] spoke of any sisters of their father, 
that is, any sisters of John or Robert Ellison." 

Secondly, we have an account of the emigration and 
subsequent history given by my uncle John Ellison as 
carefully written down by his niece. "Your great-grand- 
father William Ellison, with his family of four sons and 
one daughter, moved from County Antrim, Ireland, to 
Pennsylvania in 1744. Having moderate means, he left 
but little to his children. He and his wife are buried in 
Pennsylvania. 

'•William, Andrew, John and Robert and one daughter 
moved to Fairfield, S. C, after the death of their parents. 
William and Andrew lived bachelors, and the daughter 
married Mr. McAllister, of South Carolina. 

"'Robert Ellison, your grandfather, was born in County 
Antrim, Ireland, 1712, and was about nineteen years of 
age when he moved from Pennsylvania to Fairfield, S. C. 
Having a good English education, he soon secured the 
position of surveyor, obtained lands and other property. 
He married Elizabeth Potts, of Charleston, Xovember 6, 
1772, settled on his farm, two miles from Winnsboro, 
volunteered in the Revolutionary war. A man of indom- 
itable will and energy, he organized forthwith a company, 
of which he was captain, under General Moultrie, fought 
boldly, was promoted to major. At Stono his horse 
was killed under him. In the retreat from Augusta to 
Charleston under Moultrie (British under Lord Rawdon) 
he was daily engaged in skirmishes. The American army 
reached Charleston first, but he, while skirmishing, was 
taken prisoner, carried to Charleston, then to Johns Is- 
land, then to the Dry Tortugas, and cruelly treated for 
two years. His wife, alone and unprotected with five 
children, was molested by the depredations of the Tories, 
depriving her of everything, tore her hair by the roots, 
which mark she bore through life. She, upon little pack 
horses, with her little ones and Xewry. an old servant, left 
for Charleston, hoping to find protection in her relatives. 
The old servant, Xewry. persuaded his wife, children and 
other servants, Londonderry and Belfast, to follow him 
and serve the family at the camps. He travelled, keeping 
watch, all concealing themselves in the woods at the 



28 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



glimpse of any one in the rear or front of them. Xewry 
travelled ahead, procuring provisions, and met them at 
camp at night. After reaching Charleston your grand- 
mother hired out these servants for her support. 

''She had left her house in charge of a hired man, who 
was attacked by the Tories. He jumped from a window 
where. sat a Tory on watch; in his escape he was cut on 
the head, and he affected to be dying, when some ex- 
claimed, 'Kill him, kill him !' Others cried, 'It is a shame 
to shoot a dying man V and thus he made his escape, after- 
wards was seen and recognized by the family, but the 
house was burned. After the declaration of peace, she 
returned to her own home, her neighbors building her a 
house and caring for her, until your grandfather was re- 
leased from prison. 

"Your grandmother died on January 15, 1793. Your 
grandfather married again, Jennie Seawright. The chil- 
dren left home early in years. Your grandfather died 
March 8, 1806, and is buried alongside of his wife, and 
with his three brothers in the family burial ground on the 
old homestead, two miles from Winnsboro. My two 
brothers, William and James Ellison, early went with me 
to Charleston, where when quite a youth I entered the 
house of Lesesne & Co., as clerk, and subsequently became 
a dry-goods merchant, in King street, near Broad." 

During this last-named period my uncle John was 
married to Miss Susannah Milligan, of Charleston. 

Respecting Robert Ellison's being taken prisoner by 
the British, a family tradition is that he was confined in 
one of the vaults under the old post-office building, in com- 
pany with Colonel Hayne, who was afterwards hanged; 
also, that he was offered release if he would take the oath 
of allegiance, which he refused ; also, that part of his con- 
finement was on board a British prison-ship in the harbor 
of Charleston. Another of our family traditions is that 
when our grandmother reached Charleston with her five 
children, she interviewed the British commander and 
pleaded that, as he had her husband in confinement and 
her property all destroyed by the Tories, he ought to issue 
rations for her and her children. Her plea prevailed. 

In 1777 the famous Mt. Zion Society was organized in 



OUR ANCESTRY. 



29 



Charleston. Its first president was Colonel John Winn, 
and its wardens General William Str others and Captain 
Robert Ellison. It began with a membership of fifty- 
eight. Among its members in the second year we find the 
names of Andrew Pickens, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney 
and Wade Hampton. In 1779 two hundred and sixty- 
four names were found on its roll. The object of this 
society was to promote the education of the young men of 
the State, and its success was great. The centre of it came 
to be transferred to Winnsboro, and Captain Robert Elli- 
son was one of its chief promoters. It is of record that 
in 1784 he rode to Rowan, isT. C, to persuade the Rev. 
Thomas H. llcCaule, who was a distinguished Presbyte- 
rian minister and graduate of Princeton College, to be- 
come the president of Mt. Zion Academy. Under his ad- 
ministration it became a college, and finally, in some 
sense, there grew out of it the South Carolina College at 
Columbia. 

Hitherto we have considered family records and family 
traditions. Let us now look into Bishop Gregg's ad- 
mirable History of the Old Cheraws, where we shall find 
frequent reference to Robert Ellison, as playing a very 
important part in that portion of the State. By referring 
to the map, which Bishop Gregg gives of the old Cheraws, 
we shall see that the old Cheraws District covered the 
counties now known as Marlborough, Chesterfield, Dar- 
lington, Williamsburg, Clarendon, Sumter and Kershaw, 
and touched what is now known as Chester and Fairfield 
counties. This Cheraws District was divided, after the 
Revolution, into three portions known as Chesterfield, 
Marlborough and Darlington; but I cannot think that 
these were the same as the counties now bearing those 
names. The first mention which Bishop Gregg makes of 
Robert Ellison is in reference to a petition which the said 
Robert Ellison presented to the Legislature of South Car- 
olina, meeting in January, 1783. "On the 24th of Feb- 
ruary the petition of Robert Ellison was read, setting 
forth that he was an officer in the militia before the fall 
of Charlestown, and always exerted himself in the service 
of America — that he was made a prisoner in Camden, 
and confined on James Island under very unhappy cir- 



30 MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 

cumstances, and therefore prayed relief from the penalties 
of an act for amercing certain persons therein men- 
tioned, etc. The case of Mr. Ellison seems to have been 
misunderstood. He was consequently relieved, and con- 
tinued to enjoy the confidence and esteem of his fellow- 
citizens to the close of his useful life." (Page 416.) 

Another mention by Bishop Gregg of Robert Ellison is 
the statement that at the November election in 1788 for 
the Parish of St. David's, Morgan Brown was returned 
as Senator, and Robert Ellison, with sundry other per- 
sons, as Representatives. (Page 448.) 

Another mention of Robert Ellison is when he was 
elected, with others, a delegate from St. David's Parish to 
a convention, meeting in Columbia, on the second Mon- 
day in May, 1790, to consider the question of a new State 
constitution. This convention met in due time. The new 
constitution was adopted on the 3d of June. It gave the 
counties of Marlborough, Chesterfield and Darlington two 
representatives each, and for the three, two senators. At 
the ensuing election, Morgan Brown and Robert Ellison 
were returned Senators. (Pages 450-451.) 

Again in January, 1791, he is elected by the Legisla- 
ture a county court judge for Darlington. (Page 452.) 

In October, 1792 he is re-elected Senator. (Page 
454.) 

This year the Legislature meets on the 4th of Novem- 
ber, and on the 3d of December he presents a petition 
praying for relief to sundry persons unable to meet their 
payment of the "paper medium loan," by reason of ex- 
traordinary droughts and freshets, which ruined their 
crops. This petition is referred to a committee consisting 
of himself and Generals Barnwell and Pinckney. The 
report was favorable, and a bill passed in accordance 
therewith. At the session of the following year, 1793, 
he was elected sheriff for Cheraws. In 1795 he was ap- 
pointed by the Legislature colonel of the Thirty-eighth 
Regiment of Militia. (Pages 455 and 457.) 

The last references in Gregg's history to the then Col- 
onel Robert Ellison are on pages 460 and 461, when he 
was appointed by the Legislature one of the commis- 
sioners to run out the line between Chesterfield and Dar- 



OUE AXCESTRY. 



31 



lington, and also one of the commissioners to rebuild the 
court-house at Darlington. 

Now, as to all these statements which I have taken from 
Bishop Gregg's history, some difficulties occur to my 
mind. 

I am wondering how such a man as Robert Ellison 
could have been pointed at by the Legislature as worthy 
of being publicly amerced. But let it be observed that 
Major Ellison was captured at Camden, taken a prisoner 
to Charleston, offered a parole, which Colonel Hayne took 
and Ellison refused, and Ellison was then carried to 
James Island, and was also on the prison-ship in Charles- 
ton harbor, and finally a prisoner at St. Augustine, Fla., 
according to Moultrie, for three years. In the meantime 
his property in Fairfield was abandoned, his wife and 
children had gone to Charleston, then in the hands of the 
English, and had received for a long time rations from 
the British commander, and all of this had to be ex- 
plained. It is not to be supposed that there was a special 
act directed against Ellison, but he came under a general 
act, his property having been confiscated because of his 
long absence, and his family moving to Charleston under 
circumstances stated. 

Again, it might seem strange that in his petition for 
relief he only mentions James Island as the place of his 
suffering, whereas the family traditions affirm that he 
suffered imprisonment in other places. But then Gregg 
does not profess to give all of Ellison's petition to the 
Legislature, but only a synopsis of it. We do not know 
how much of detail Ellison put into his petition. 

Once more, it looks strange at first sight that Robert 
Ellison, returning to his farm after his liberation from 
prison, should so soon afterwards be found, according to 
Bishop Gregg, as filling various public offices away over 
in Darlington. Moreover, it is of public record at Winns- 
boro how he was in Fairfield in 1788, when he and his 
wife sold one of her grants of land, their oldest child, Su- 
sannah, being one of the witnesses to the deed, all of which 
raises a presumption that he and his family were then 
dwelling at their home in Fairfield. Still further, in 
1799, when he seems to have finished his career in Dar- 



32 



MY LIFE AJTD TIMES. 



lingtoH, his two oldest sons were grown up young men. 
And how are we to account for it that neither John Ellison 
nor Lawyer Billy Ellison, in speaking to their children 
about the family history, should never have spoken of their 
father or grandfather having lived or held public office in 
the eastern part of the State ? But when we carefully con- 
sider the geography of South Carolina more than a hun- 
dred years ago, these difficulties lose their force. We 
must not confound the Darlington of that time with the 
Darlington of the present date. It was then no great 
distance from Fairfield to Darlington. The Darlington 
of that day embraced both Kershaw and Sumter counties, 
and Kershaw borders on Fairfield. By referring to the 
map in Gregg's History of the Cheraws, it will appear 
that the Cheraws District covered the counties now known 
as Marlboro, Chesterfield, Darlington, Williamsburg, 
Clarendon, Sumter and Kershaw, and touched what are 
now known as Chester and Fairfield counties. Camden, 
the county town of Kershaw county, is only thirty miles 
from Winnsboro, the county town of Fairfield. So that 
Major Ellison might live near Winnsboro and yet, in 
those days of horse-back riding, might do business in 
parts of Darlington without inflicting very grievous ab- 
sences upon his family. Let me add that my grand- 
mother's boys did not like their step-mother, and, as my 
Uncle John Ellison testifies, they departed from their 
paternal home, and found employment elsewhere in their 
very early years. 

Let us now inquire what remains to be said about my 
mother's ancestry on her mother's side. It will be very 
little. 

Elizabeth Potts was the daughter of Thomas Potts. In 
the Secretary of State's office in Columbia, there is record 
of grants of land made to him by the British government 
as early as 1732. Such grants were continually made by 
the British government to encourage emigration to their 
colonies in this then forest country. These grants were 
usually of one hundred acres each, the commissioners no 
doubt considering that one hundred acres would consti- 
tute a pretty good farm, as it does in England. 

The record in the Secretary of State's office referred to 
above of grants of land to Thomas Potts is as follows : 



OUR AKCESTEY. 



33 



Elizabeth Potts, grant 100 acres, elate December, 1774; 
George Potts, grant 100 acres, elate December, 1753 and 
1772; James Potts, grant 100 acres, date December, 
1775; Jeremiah Potts, grant 100 acres, date December, 
1762; John Potts, grant 100 acres, date December, 
1767-68 and '69 ; Robert Potts, grant 100 acres, date 
December, '66, '68 and '81 ; Sarah Potts, grant 100 acres, 
date December, '68. 

Then comes the name of Thomas Potts, opposite to 
which it is written 1782 to 1786 several grants, and im- 
mediately under this is again the name of Thomas Potts, 
opposite to which is again written 1759-1770 several 
grants. 

There is recorded in the clerk's office at Winnsboro, 
Fairfield District, a conveyance to Valentine Rochel of 
one hundred acres of land by Robert Ellison and his wife 
Elizabeth Ellison [late Elizabeth Potts], the said land 
being an original grant to Elizabeth Potts dated 4th day 
of May, 1775. 

Witness to deed, Susannah Potts Ellison and James 
Linn. 

The date of this deed is December 10, 1788. 

There is a Captain Richard Matchett living nine miles 
from Winnsboro. In this year of grace 1897 he is eighty- 
f our years of age. Gentlemen writing me from Fairfield 
speak of him as "a fine old gentleman of the Irish style," 
and of "the highest character, venerated and beloved by 
everybody." This old gentleman testifies that his mother 
was a McGrady, and her mother an Alexander, and her 
mother a Potts, and that she was a sister of the Elizabeth 
Potts who married my grandfather Robert Ellison. This 
sister died in Ireland, but her father and the rest of his 
family came direct to South Carolina. Captain Matchett 
also speaks of a grand uncle of his own, by name James 
Alexander, who was a merchant in Charleston, became 
rich and went back to Ireland. William and John Elli- 
son, sons of my grandfather Robert Ellison, while still 
very young on their first removal from home to Charles- 
ton, clerked awhile for their cousin James Alexander. 

This old Captain Matchett was one of a company of 
emigrants from the north of Ireland, who arrived in 



34 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



Charleston in 1820. I remember how my father met 
them on the wharf, and took them all to his house until 
wagons could be procured to haul them and their belong- 
ings up to Fairfield county, where they settled on the 
lands of .Robert Ellison and William Adger. Captain 
Matchett frequently speaks of my father's hospitality and 
kind assistance. 

Upon his testimony I think it is very clear and certain 
that my mother's ancestry, on her mother's side, came 
directly from the north of Ireland to this country as early 
ai least as 1732. 

I return now to what followed my father's engagement 
to Miss Sarah Ellison. Having completed this important 
affair on which so much of the happiness of his life was 
to depend he now prepares to return to Charleston, and 
Mr. Samuel Bones, a kinsman of my grandmother's, was 
to accompany him. They were to begin business together 
as cotton buyers. There was only a weekly stage from 
Columbia to Charleston, and rather than wait they agreed 
to foot it. But the country being flat there were gather- 
ings of water on the road sometimes a foot deep. Mr. 
Bones had recently arrived from Ireland, and the voyage 
as usual in those days being very long, his blood had be- 
come disordered, and he hesitated about walking through 
the water. My father said, "Come along, Bones, and you 
shall ride on my back." He was a great big Irishman 
over six feet high, and actually did ride on his friend's 
shoulders whenever they had to pass through water. They 
began business at the corner of King street and Burns' 
Lane (Blackbird Alley), and many were the bags of cot- 
ton they bought that year, when that trade was in its early 
infancy, and many a night after a hard day's work did 
the\ sleep on a cotton bag for a bed. They began business 
under the name of Bones & Adger, and people used to 
laugh and call them Bones and Ankles. 

Subsequently when he had left his cotton buying busi- 
ness in Charleston to visit his fiancee, and was returning 
he left Columbia on a spirited young black horse. Sev- 
eial merchants of that city requested him to take charge 
of packages of bank bills to be conveyed to Charleston. 
At that early day they had not the present facilities for 



OUR ANCESTRY. 



35 



transmitting money. He set out on horseback alone with 
his saddle-bags somewhat stuffed with these packages. 
His horse took fright at a dead alligator lying in one of 
the water ponds on the road, mentioned above, and he was 
thrown over the animal's head into the water, the horse 
taking to his heels in the woods. My father had not long 
passed a house on the roadside. He went back and the 
woman of the house dried his clothes by her fire, he mean- 
while covered up in bed, and her husband started in search 
of the horse. But he had not been long gone when it first 
came to my father's mind that he had those packages of 
money in his saddle-bags, and they open — not locked. 
The idea of their possible loss in those woods, or being 
stolen, and he so great a stranger in Charleston, threw him 
into a cold sweat. Every now and then he would sing out 
to the woman, "Is your husband coming ?" and she would 
look down the road, and answer, "No." At last her an- 
swer was, "'Yes, he is coming, but he has not got the 
horse." He came bringing the saddle-bags, saddle and 
bridle. He had searched the woods in vain for a long 
time, and at last found that the horse, almost as soon as 
he entered the forest, had fallen and broken his neck. My 
father said that he rammed his hand down into the saddle- 
bags, and finding all right there, was inexpressibly re- 
lieved and felt little concern about the dead horse. 

Resuming his cotton buying, he bethought him of a 
paper given to him by his old friend and quasi father, Mr. 
John Bailey, of New York, when he left New York in 
charge of the supercargo, and the ship of iron ware. It 
was a note for $600, due to Mr. Bailey by some person in 
Charleston, which had been long overdue, and, as was sup- 
posed, would never be collected. Mr. Bailey said, "Here,, 
Jemmy, take this and collect it for yourself if you can." 
He took the note to a young lawyer of the name of Cheves, 
who had associated with himself a Mr. Peace, and was 
just commencing practice at the Charleston bar. He said 
to Mr. Cheves, "If you collect this note, you shall have 
the half of it for your trouble." Calling after some time 
to inquire about the note, Mr. Peace, who was in the front 
apartment of the office, was proceeding to count out and 
hand over to him the $600. He said to Mr. Peace, "But 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



my agreement with Mr. Cheves was that I was only to re- 
ceive the half of this money." The senior partner, who 
sat writing in the back room with the door open, over- 
heard what was said. He called out, "Mr. Peace, take 
$20 from Mr. Adger, which is our legitimate fee, and pay 
him the rest of the money." Such was the beginning of 
the honorable and splendid career of Langdon Cheves, a 
native-born citizen of South Carolina. Neither party to 
this transaction had the idea that a grandson of the one 
should marry a granddaughter of the other. 

My parents were married in 1806, and moved to 
Charleston, living first in Boundary street, in a wooden 
house next to the present Zion church building, put up for 
Dr. Girardeau's congregation. Thence, after awhile, my 
father moved to No. 2 of the Brownlee Row in King 
street. There he began to carry on the hardware business 
under the firm name of James Adger & Co. In 1818 he 
formed the acquaintance of Mr. Alexander Brown, of 
Baltimore, and his son James Brown, of New York ; he 
went on to England, where he met Mr. William Brown, 
and proceeded to the north of Ireland to visit his old 
home. This visit resulted in his becoming connected in 
business with Alexander Brown & Sons, of Baltimore; 
John A. Brown & Co., of Philadelphia; Brown Brothers 
& Co., of New York, and William and James Brown & 
Co., of Liverpool. He was a great favorite with old Mr. 
Alexander Brown, and he became the agent of the Browns 
in Charleston. They had but lately commenced their 
magnificent commercial career, and his connection with 
them was the real foundation of his own fortune. He at 
once committed his hardware business in King street to 
the hands of some subordinates, and established himself 
on Magwood wharf and commenced the commission and 
factorage business, also buying and selling exchange for 
the Browns. After some years he paid a second visit to 
the north of Ireland, and brought back with him Mr. 
James Black, who had connections with the linen manu- 
factories of that region. The firm then became Adger & 
Black ; but after a very few years my father preferred to 
have a dissolution of the concern. He then brought his 
hardware business down to East Bay, thus uniting his 



OUR ANCESTRY. 



forces. Subsequently lie purchased the wharves, which, 
still bear his name. About the year 1838 his health failed 
for some years, the effect of a severe cold taken when with 
me in Ireland. But he again recovered his vigor. As 
previously to this date he had had much to do with the 
origination of the old South Carolina. Railroad, the first 
railroad of any length ever attempted in this country or 
the world, so after this period he set on foot the line of 
steamers between Charleston and XeAY York which did so 
much in building up the commerce of our city. About the 
year 1847 he began to execute his plan of placing a stone 
front to both his south and north wharf. Many practical 
men said it would certainly be a failure, those immense 
granite rocks would have no suitable foundation in the old 
palmetto piles down in the mud and the whole structure 
would have to fall in the water before it was even finished. 
But there it stands to this clay a monument to his sound 
judgment and practical wisdom, as well as to his courage 
and energy. 

The married life of my parents extended a little beyond 
their golden wedding clay. Their' s was indeed a golden 
marriage. I never saw or heard of anything, but love and 
kindness betwixt them during all the fifty-two years of 
their union. My mother's health gave way some two 
years before her death, and for a large portion of the time 
she was an invalid. A devoted wife, a tender, loving and 
judicious mother, and a humble, consistent Christian, 
she passed peaceably away on the 18th of October, 1856, 
at Sullivan's Island. A large assemblage met us at the 
Second Presbyterian church, and, Dr. Girardeau pre- 
siding, we laid her away to rest in the family burying 
ground of that cemetery. 

This event did not, so far as I know, visibly affect the 
health of our father. His grief was not manifested in 
tears or words. That was not the style of the man. But 
it was evident to us all how deeply he" felt the solitude into 
which he had passed. He was accustomed for many years 
to spend his summers at Kinclerhook, at Saratoga," whose 
waters always benefited him, and other summer retreats 
at the North. In September, 1858, when he was in his 
eighty-second year, he was at New York with his two 



38 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



younger daughters and his son James, besides two of 
his granddaughters and Kev. Dr. Girardeau. He took a 
cold from sitting at a broken window behind him in a 
parlor of the St. ^Nicholas Hotel. Pneumonia ensued, 
and after a short time he ended there, on the 24th inst., 
his long, active, useful and honorable life. I hastened on, 
but was too late to see him alive. Mr. James Brown had 
the remains moved to his house, and there, in his parlor, 
some other friends joining us, we had religious services, 
the Rev. Dr. Leland, of Columbia, S. C, officiating, and 
then all that was mortal of our father was deposited in 
the family vault of .Mr. Brown until cold weather, when 
it could be properly removed to Charleston. This duty 
was performed by my brother Robert. On the 27th of 
November a large assembly of the citizens of Charleston 
were gathered in the Second church at his funeral, when 
Dr. Girardeau officiated again, and then his remains were 
deposited in his family burial ground of that church. 
There stands the double monumental stone in memory 
of both my father and mother, she having preceded him 
by two years. It bears the following inscription, pre- 
pared by their son James : 

On the face towards the East: 

"The just man I ( "Pure, peaceable, gentle, 

walketh in his integrity." and easy to be entreated." 

JAMES ADGER, SARAH ELIZABETH, 

Died 24th September, 1858, His Wife, Died 18th October, 1856, 
Aged 81 Years. Aged 73 Yeaes. 

"Thus saith the Lord, 
Refrain thy voice from weeping and thine eyes from tears, 
for . . . They shall come again from the land of the enemy." 



On the face towards the ^Yest 



Then Abraham 
gave up the ghost and 
died in a good old age, an 
old man, and full of vears. 



And Sarah died. 
And Abraham came 
to mourn for Sarah 
and to weep for her." 

Companions of a half century, 
separated by two brief years, 
now reunited. 
"Neither can they die any more." 



OUR ANCESTRY. 



39 



My father's was a strong character. He had the kind 
of will always necessary to constitute such a character, 
to which was added a sound, clear judgment and great 
energy. He was careful in deliberating, but prompt and 
bold to act, and very determined in persevering. His in- 
tegrity was proverbial. He was more reserved than dem- 
onstrative of his feelings, so that his heart and hand were 
always more open than his lips. In my early life I did 
not understand my father, but in this my eighty-sixth 
year, reading over his old letters, some of them seventy 
years old, which I have long and carefully preserved, I 
have been inexpressibly affected, as I have seen and felt 
the tender love for me which breathes through them all. 
Well do I know now how warm his affections were, and 
yet so too were his antipathies. A man of actions and not 
words. He was rather irritable under small annoyances, 
but calm, cool and self-possessed in times of trial and 
danger. I waked him up one morning at three o'clock, 
rode down with him and walked with him round and 
again round a cotton conflagration which consumed the 
contents of an immense brick building belonging to him. 
For the lack of full insurance on the cotton his loss was 
$50,000. He spoke hardly a word, just calmly looking 
on, but when the roof at last fell in, and he saw the full 
extent of the loss, daylight had come, and he quietly said 
to his sons, all being present, "Come, boys, let's go home 
to breakfast ! We must come down and go to work build- 
ing again." And that was ail he said, but the rebuilding 
was begun at once. 

From his very birth the child of earnest and constant 
prayers, he was trained to obedience and all good conduct ; 
in his youth and early manhood he was always free from 
the "small vices" which a hundred years ago were held 
more odious than now in the close of this boastful nine- 
teenth century. Accordingly he always lived a strictly 
sober, moral and upright life. But in the year 1832 he 
was led to make a public profession of his humble faith 
in the redemption of Christ for sinners, and thus he be- 
came a communicating member of the Second Presbyte- 
rian church. I remember that he said to the session that 
he hoped he would not bring any dishonor on the church. 



40 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



He never was "profuse in religious discourse." He sel- 
dom alluded to his own spiritual experiences. His re- 
ligion "appeared in its fruits, in gentleness, humility and 
benevolence, in a steady conscientious performance of 
every duty, and a careful abstinence from the appearance 
of evil." 

In his last moments, as Dr. Girardeau testifies, being 
asked of his willingness to die, and of his trust only in 
Christ, he promptly and decidedly replied that he was 
"willing to submit to the will of God in his removal from 
earth," and that his faith was "in the atoning blood and 
merits of the Lord Jesus Christ." This, says Dr. Girar- 
deau, was "literally his dying testimony. It was almost 
his last audible and rational expression of his feelings." 



J 



CHAPTEK II. 



My Childhood astd Early Youth. 
1810-1822. 

I WAS born the 13th of December, 1810, being the 
third child of my parents. I had two sisters older 
than myself, namely, Margaret Milligan and Susan Dun- 
lap. Younger than myself I had three brothers, James, 
Robert and William, then two sisters, Sarah Elizabeth 
and Jane Anne, and then another brother, Joseph Ellison. 
At this date I have survived them all except my sister, 
Jane Anne, and my brother, Joseph Ellison. 

Mj very earliest recollection is of a feat which I per- 
formed one Sunday at church. I cannot have been over 
three years old. I remember distinctly the pew then 
occupied by my father with his little family. It is on the 
left-hand of the pulpit of the Second Presbyterian church 
in the extreme corner on the side next Charlotte street. 
The "small boy" had a little bench upon the seat of the 
pew, so that he could see and be seen. And his provident 
mother, to help him through the service, had furnished 
him a biscuit. He devoured as much of it as he wanted, 
and then amused himself with putting a piece of it up his 
nose, and when he could not readily get it out again, 
raised a loud yell from his little perch which interrupted 
Dr. Flinn, and disturbed the congregation so that he had 
to be carried out bawling. All that week he was told by 
everybody that he would have to go up the following Sun- 
day morning to the pulpit and ask Dr. Flinn's pardon. 
Sunday came and they all had forgotten what they said, 
but "small boy" remembered it, and intended fully to do 
it. In those days Presbyterian parents and children went 
to and came from church always in a family group. So, 
no sooner had this family entered the house than the little 
three-year-old, separating himself from the rest, was seen 
to be running up the big cross aisle and rapidly making 
tracks for the pulpit steps. They caught him just before 
he reached them. 



42 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



In 1812 the United States declared war with Great 
Britain. On the 8th January, 1815, when I was just 
turned of four years, they gained the victory at New 
Orleans with troops under General Andrew Jackson, the 
battle being actually fought after peace had been agreed 
on, but had not yet been published. But it had been the 
expectation that Charleston, and not New Orleans, was 
to be attacked, and so during the winter of the year 1814 
the citizens of my native city were at work every day 
throwing up a line of defence against an attack by land. 
These "lines" stretched across from the Cooper to the 
Ashley river, and were laid out by skillful military en- 
gineers, were as high as a man's shoulders, and some ten 
feet broad on the top and fifteen at the bottom — deep 
ditches in front and lines of sharpened posts set in these 
ditches all along, so as to hinder the near approach of the 
enemy. 

My father was first lieutenant of the Independent 
Greens, a company of young Irishmen. It was the custom 
for wives, mothers, and children to walk up in the after- 
noons and see the husbands and fathers at work. A friend 
of my father, who was not of the military, took his family 
and ours up there one afternoon. He had a little son of 
my age, and got a couple of little wooden spades made for 
him and me. So, on reaching the lines where my father 
and his men were at work, these two little chaps, not then 
four years old, were permitted to fill one hand-barrow with 
the dirt that was to be carried on a plank over a deep 
ditch to the opposite embankment. If the two juveniles 
were not very proud of this patriotic performance, no 
doubt both their mothers were. They filled the barrow, 
but did not venture across the plank. 

I have a very distinct recollection of the rejoicings in 
Charleston over the news of peace. Butler, a young Afri- 
can slave of my father's, carried a hand bell and rang it 
all through the streets, as many others like him were sent 
to do, and all the church bells rang also. I remember, too, 
the illumination of the town that night, with candles ; no 
electric lights then, and no gas lights either, not even 
lamps filled with oil, only candles, but it was held to be a 
grand affair. 



MY CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH. 



43 



The first school I ever went to was kept not far from 
our home by old Mrs. Mood in Meeting street, just below 
Boundary, on the left-hand as you go down town. It was 
right opposite to the second one of the three-story brick 
buildings which still stand on the west corner of Meeting 
and Boundary. Those buildings had basement windows 
on the street, dead-windows, never opened then, and I 
suppose never since. Their shutters set back, and so there 
was made a little shelf about as high from the ground as 
would accommodate a youngster of not more than four 
years. That shelf is associated with my very earliest 
recollections. At our school intermission we children 
used to run across the street and make that recessed win- 
dow the shelf for our luncheons or playthings. 

At Mrs. Mood's school, I remember what admiration 
I felt for a big boy named Owen Fitzsimons, and for an- 
other named J ohn Stoney. Mrs. Mood taught me to speak 
that famous speech — 

" You'd scarce expect one of my age 

To speak in public on the stage, 

And if I chance to fall below 

Demosthenes or Cicero, 

Don't view me with a critic's eye, 

But pass my imperfections by. 

Great streams from little fountains flow, 

Tall oaks from little acorns grow, 

And all great, learned men like me 

Once learned their little A, B, C." 

This is a classic morceau. It certainly runs far back 
perhaps even into the seventeenth century. Fearing that 
this proud nineteenth century, which has produced so 
many beautiful things, has come to despise and forget 
these exquisite lines, I think it my duty in this history of 
my times to record them here, and pass them into the 
twentieth century. There also, at a very early age, I 
learned to read, and I well remember my grandmother's 
praises when, at four years of age, I stood at her knee and 
read the second chapter of Matthew, beginning, "Now, 
when Jesus was born," etc. Having naturally what was 
then styled a "cow-lick," which inclined mv hair back- 
wards, she used to tell me that I looked like Dr. Flinn, 
who brushed his hair back, and that I also was to be a 
preacher. 



44 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



The famous speech above referred to was once delivered 
about this period on an occasion when the orator covered 
himself with glory. We lived then in Brownlee's Row, 
the second house from the corner of Hudson in King 
street, where I first saw the light. Mr. Samuel Robert- 
son's family and ours were very intimate. They lived on 
the opposite side of King street at the south corner of 
Vanderhorst, where the house still stands. My sisters and 
I were allowed to take tea there one evening with express 
directions from my mother to return at eight o'clock. The 
four-year-old was called on by Mr. Robertson to make 
his celebrated speech. In the middle of the speech the 
big clock in the room began to strike. The boy stop- 
ped in the middle of his speech, and gravely counted one, 
two, three, etc., and then he shouted, "There, mother said 
we must come home at eight o'clock ; let us go !" The 
oration was not finished. 

The youthful orator distinguished himself greatly on 
another occasion about the same period. We had occa- 
sional visits from a Philadelphia friend of my father's, a 
north of Ireland gentleman, of some degree of kinship 
with him, who was very fond of children, and whom we 
all called "Uncle Harper." He had gone out one evening 
to walk, and came home to tea with his pockets full of 
apples. One was given to John, who enjoyed greatly the 
eating of it, and then modestly expressed himself thus, 
"Uncle Harper, if you were to say to me, ' John, will you. 
have another apple/ I would say, 'Yes, sir, if you 
please.' " The rest of the ceremony, of course, was car- 
ried out. 

One of the happiest days of my early childhood was 
j when I was allowed to accompany our Maum Sue to the 
Charleston market. She was a faithful slave given to 
my mother by her father, and nursed all of us children, 
and also did the cooking. Many a basket of chips did we 
little boys gather for her to bake biscuits in the Dutch 
oven, and many a biscuit, and many a "fadge" * did we 
get before supper or breakfast for this help. The day 

* The "fadge*' is an Irish biscuit made of flour with boiling water 
poured on it and then baked. The boiling water acts like the best 
yeast powder. 



MY CHILDHOOD AND EAELY YOUTH. 



45 



that I went with her to the market was a red-letter day 
in my young life. My next brother, James, was not to 
go — he was "too little/ 7 only about four, but I was his 
big brother, say, six years old. I could go, but he could 
not. Maum Sue instructed me to run round the corner 
of Hudson, and wait there, till she would come to me, 
after getting away from him. So off we started, she with 
her market-basket and money, and I with eyes and ears 
wide open to see and hear all the wondrous things. 

Coming back from market that day Maum Sue took me 
with her when she went to see Uncle Aberdeen, who had 
his cooper's shop on Boundary street, between Meeting 
and King, where Marion Square now stands. That street 
was so called because then the city extended no further 
up ; now it is Calhoun street. All above that street was 
"The !Neck," and not under municipal authority. Uncle 
Aberdeen was very old, and very black, but he was very 
good. We children all looked on him as a saint already. 
To go and see old Uncle Aberdeen, capped the climax of 
my joy that day. 

My brother James must have begun to accompany my 
older sisters and me to Mrs. Mood's school, when not more 
than four or five years old. He was always a bold and en- 
terprising fellow. One day, as we were all going home, 
he rushed from us out into the middle of Boundary street 
for something that he saw, and fell, and a dray, loaded 
with a hogshead of tobacco, passed over him. We were 
horrified. Old Uncle Aberdeen lifted and carried him 
home. His only hurt, as it proved, was that a piece of the 
skin of his skull as big as a silver dollar was scraped off 
by the tail skid of the dray. There was great alarm at 
home, when old Uncle Aberdeen brought in the wounded 
boy. Old Dr. Urontis, our family physician, was sent 
for, and J ames, of course, was to be a prisoner for several 
days. But seeing a dray, with cotton on it, enter the yard, 
he rushed down stairs, and as the dray went out empty, 
he was seen mounted on the tails, or skirts, of the dray, 
and shouting as he rode out. 

There was good family government at the home of our 
childhood, notwithstanding this unruly performance of 
venturesome James. It was my mother who held the 



46 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



reins, for I believe my father never laid his finger on one 
of his children. My gentle and loving mother was as 
firm as she was kind. She had a little instrument that 
greatly assisted her. It was made of a piece of stout 
leather, about fifteen inches long and three wide. It was 
cut into nine strips, or tails, about one foot long, leaving 
three inches as a handle, with a hole in the handle to 
hang it up by, and it was always hung up on the right- 
hand jamb of our dining-room chimney. But we never 
called it a "cat-o'-nine-tails." It had the far more vener- 
able name which it brought from the old country, namely, 
the "tawse." Whenever it was necessary, this instrument 
was put in operation. But that was very seldom, for my 
good mother's word was a law to us all. Only one occa- 
sion do I recall when she ever appealed to my father's 
authority. My intrepid brother James was given a piece 
of dry bread to eat when hungry. He demanded some- 
thing better, and, indeed, he threw the bread on the floor. 
When told to pick it up, he refused. Just then my father 
came in, and my mother pointed him to James, and the 
despised piece of bread. All he had to sav was, "Pick up 
that bread, sir, and eat it this minute." Both actions were 
quickly and duly performed. 

The only experiences I ever had of the "tawse" from 
my mother were two. One was tolerably severe. But it 
was unjust. My mother did not correctly apprehend the 
case. The other was for a little fight my brother James 
and I had, on a Sunday afternoon, in the street, outside 
our front gate. We had no business to be outside of the 
gate, much less to be fighting there on a Sunday. We did 
not get any more than we deserved. My mother's rule was 
for her boys to play in our large yard at home, and we 
were never in the street, day or night, except when re- 
quired to go or come. 

At school I never got a whipping. Once Dr. Jones, of 
whom I was a pupil when ten years old at his school in St. 
Philips street, smote me on my right palm with his pad- 
dle, and once, when I was a year or two older, the Bev. 
Edward Palmer, the father of Dr. Ben Palmer, of New 
Orleans, caught me doing my writing exercise, and not 
holding my pen in the prescribed way. Walking behind 



MY CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH. 



47 



us as we wrote, he saw my disobedience, and cracked me 
on the skull a few times with the handle of his penknife. 
Long years after this I made him laugh when we became 
co-presbyters, by twitting him about his penknife on my 
skull. The paddling I got from Dr. Jones came about on 
this wise. Mr. Samuel Robertson's son, a year or two older 
than I, and my particular friend, finding my copy-book 
on my desk and my writing lesson all done, amused him- 
self in my absence with a little piece of playful mischief. 
Every line of my copy closed with the letter "n," and 
John B. Robertson twisted round the end of each, after 
the manner of a pug dog's tail. Dr. Jones asked me, 
"Why did you do that, sir V I said nothing, and he gave 
me the paddle. 

On the arrival from Ireland of a young kinsman of my 
grandmother's, who bore her maiden name of Crawford, 
I was removed from Dr. Jones' school, and Hamilton 
Crawford and I came under the instruction of the Rev. 
Mr. Palmer in Beaufain street at the head of Archdale. 
This did not last long, for Mr. Palmer, who was not then 
a minister, left Charleston to go somewhere at the North 
to study theology, and was after that ordained. Hamil- 
ton was my senior by a number of years, and he com- 
menced then his business career, while I went to the clas- 
sical school of Prof. William E. Bailey in Wentworth 
street, east of Meeting. My brother James went with me 
to the same school, but was in the English department of 
it under Mr. Courtenay, father of William A. Courtenay, 
for several terms mayor of Charleston. 

I began the study of Latin with an excellent teacher, 
Prof. William E. Bailey, and, after some length of time, 
of Greek also. I was fond of reading, and in these days 
I made the acquaintance of Robinson Crusoe s Life and 
Adventures, in the large and full form in which it then 
appeared. That book made a profound impression on me, 
and I think I owe much to the immortal Defoe. I was 
also greatly charmed by old John Bunyan — 

" That ingenious dreamer in whose well-told tale 
Sweet Fiction and sweet Truth alike prevail." 

I think I must have got acquainted in those days with 
Cowper's Task. And I know that Milton's Paradise Lost 



48 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



attracted me strongly. There was another book given me 
by some friend, altogether forgotten by the young people 
of this day, to which I owe very much, for it made read- 
ing delightful to me, and through it I began to know 
something about the great city of London and its various 
classes of society. Its title was, The Hermit in London. 
Mj recollections of it are so pleasant that I would like to 
sit down now, in my eighty-sixth year, and hear it all 
read from beginning to end. But among the books I 
loved in my early boyhood I should not forget to mention 
Miss Edgeworth's Parents' Assistant, whose beautiful 
stories in that volume had but one fault. She was a Uni- 
tarian, and, if I do not greatly mistake, there is not the 
slightest reference to the Almighty, or to any other re- 
ligious truth, in the whole book. I was at that time a 
thoughtless boy, and, of course, the discovery of this 
feature was made in after years. One other part of my 
early education I must now mention. I went every Sun- 
day to Sunday-school in the galleries of the old Second 
Presbyterian church, where we learned Old Testament 
history, as well as that of the ~New Testament, out of the 
simple question and answer books then published by the 
American Sunday-school Union. The instruction was 
directly from the Bible, for we were naturally led to read 
and study the chapter which constituted the subject of 
the lesson. Comparisons are invidious. It will not do 
for the old man to say that he prefers the simpler and 
directer method of those early days to the more preten- 
tious ones of the present time, but, nevertheless, the old 
man has his own opinion. 

I came, in these boyhood days, somewhat under the in- 
fluence of an Irish scholar, who strangely enough was 
passenger in a ship coming directly to Charleston about 
the year 1820, with a company of north of Ireland farm- 
ers, emigrating to South Carolina, to whose coming I 
referred in Chapter I. My father and his brother in 
Fairfield District, were assisting them to leave the old 
country. 

Among them, but not of them, was Robert F. Macully. 
He was no Presbyterian, but of the English Church. 
Evidently his kind and affable behavior had endeared him 



MY CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH. 



49 



to the other passengers, who, of course, introduced him to 
my father. Being a solitary, unknown stranger in 
Charleston, he was invited to my father's house, and he 
came and charmed us all, grandmother, parents and chil- 
dren. He was some twenty-two or three years old, tall 
and handsome, of refined and most pleasing manners. He 
was not only a gentleman, but he was a scholar, knew 
Latin and Greek, French, Italian and Spanish, and had 
quite a library of elegant volumes in these various lan- 
guages. I think he must have been intended for an Eng- 
lish clergyman, for when once asked by my oldest sister 
what made him come to America, his answer was, "Be- 
cause I preferred my trans- Atlantic liberty to a curacy 
and ninety pounds a year." He soon became a professor 
in the Charleston College, and a student of law with 
Judge Mitchell King. Being anxious to perfect himself 
in speaking Spanish, he went from my father's house to 
board with a Spanish family, where he soon became a 
very great favorite, but one night, supping with them 
on one of their Spanish dishes, fried plantains (which is 
a kind of coarse banana), they proved fatal to him. How 
well do I remember going with my mother to see our dear 
young friend on his dying bed, and how poor, old Senora 
Kavina did weep over him. My father had to administer 
on his little estate, and send home the proceeds to his 
mother. At the public auction he bid in his writing desk 
and a number of his beautifully bound French and Italian 
books, all of which he gave to me. Most of these books 
were burned with my library by Sherman in Columbia. 
A few of them I still possess, with his autograph on the 
fly-leaf, thus, "K. Macully," and sometimes, "Kobert F. 
Macully, ISTewtonardes, Ireland." 

The last school I attended in Charleston was kept by 
the Rev. George Reid, a Presbyterian minister in Meet- 
ing street, a little above Market. This was during the 
first half of the year 1824. But subsequently all that part 
of the city was destroyed by fire, and rebuilt as now. 
Among my companions in Mr. Reid's school were Dr. 
Thomas L. Ogier, of Charleston, and the Rev. Dr. Ed- 
ward T. Buist, of Greenville. Edward T. Buist was some 
years my senior, and we were intimate friends at Mr. 



50 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



Reid's school. This intimacy was renewed at Princeton 
Seminary, and it continued through all his life. He had 
a vigorous intellect, early became a devoted Christian, 
and was, through a long life, an eminent and very useful 
Christian minister. 

Thomas L. Ogier was about my age. At Mr. Peid's 
school he did not distinguish himself as a student, and I 
lost sight of him, when I left that school, went to Kinder- 
hook Academy, and passed through Union College and 
Princeton Seminary. The very next time I laid eyes on 
Ogier, just returned from his course of studies at Paris, 
was in the Medical College building of Charleston, when, 
surrounded by a number of eminent surgeons, I saw him 
take hold of a semi-circular surgical knife and passing it 
under the thigh of a negro, lying on a table before him, 
at one sweep, cut through all the flesh of it down to the 
very bone. Next I saw him tie up the arteries and com- 
plete the successful amputation. He still lives at this 
date, ^November, 1896, after a long and most useful life, 
respected and honored by all Charleston. 

While I was going to Mr. Peid's school, I conceived a 
desire to learn French, and so, with my father's consent, 
in addition to my school hours, I took lessons three times 
a week from Serlor Pavina, in whose family my admired 
friend, P. Macully, had boarded until his lamented death. 
From him I learned enough to read any ordinary French 
book. 

Before I close this chapter let me go back and give some 
account of occurrences in Charleston during the year 
1822, which very greatly excited our good city, and fixed 
impressions on the public mind, which lasted, many long 
years in full vigor. On the 30th of May a faithful slave 
communicated to his master that an attempt at insurrec- 
tion by the negroes against the whites was to be made very 
shortly. He had learned this from one of the conspira- 
tors, who wished him to join in the attempt. That man 
was immediately arrested, and by degrees all the leaders 
came to be known, taken up and imprisoned. A few of 
them proved to be men of remarkable ener^v and daring. 
But even they showed themselves to be very ignorant and 
utterly incompetent to plan or carry out such a movement. 



MY CHILDHOOD AXD EARLY YOUTH. 



51 



The most remarkable of these few men was Denmark 
Vesey. During the Revolutionary war, in the year 1781, 
he was brought as a slave boy, aged about fourteen, from 
Africa to San Domingo by one Captain Vesey, who com- 
manded a ship in the slave trade. On the voyage the cap- 
tain and his officers were struck with his beauty, alertness 
and intelligence. They made a pet of him by taking him 
into the cabin, changing his apparel, and calling him, by 
way of distinction, Telemaque, which appellation was, by 
gradual corruption among the negroes, changed to Den- 
mark, or sometimes Telmah. Subsequently he was 
brought to Charleston by Capt. Vesey, who retained pos- 
session of the boy, and he was his most faithful slave for 
twenty years. In 1800 Denmark drew a prize of $1,500 
in a lottery in Charleston called "East Bay Street Lot- 
tery, 77 and he then purchased his freedom from the cap- 
tain at the low price of $600. From that time he con- 
tinned very successfully, for about twenty-one years, his 
trade as carpenter in Charleston. Among his color, he 
had unbounded influence. His temper was impetuous 
and domineering in the extreme. All his passions were 
ungovernable and savage, and to his numerous wives and 
children he displayed the haughty and capricious cruelty 
of an Eastern Bashaw. This man, it was abundantly 
proved, was the sole originator of the plot of insurrection. 
He had revolved the subject in his mind for many years, 
and had succeeded in uniting with himself a considerable 
number of others. It was at his house that the leaders 
continually assembled to take counsel together. And 
there it was, he, who encouraged the timid, removed the 
scruples of the religious by gross prostitution of the sacred 
oracles, and inflamed the resolute by all the savage fasci- 
nations of blood and booty. 

The 16th of June, at midnight, was the time appointed 
for the insurrection. Under the several leaders, different 
companies were to attack the arsenal in the northwestern 
part of the city, and another depot where arms were kept 
in King street, besides other places of a like kind. Dif- 
ferent parts of the city were to be simultaneously set on 
fire, and when the fire bells were rung and white men 
rushed out from their houses, they were all to be put to 



52 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



death, and then the women and children were to be dis- 
posed of, and not one white skin was to be left alive. 
These poor creatures seemed to imagine that this was all 
to be done with the greatest ease, and without any white 
resistance. Such was the ignorance even of the leaders 
and of Denmark Yesey himself. They counted on all 
their race in Charleston rising at once to get free, forget- 
ting how many of them were too faithful to their masters 
and how few of them had any arms or capacity for such a 
contest. They counted on whole armies coming in from 
the immediate neighborhood of Charleston, as if any such 
widespread cooperation were a thing conceivable. They 
were even made to believe that as soon as they began to 
fight with the whites of Charleston, the English, against 
whom there had been war a few years before, would come 
to their assistance. They were even made to believe that 
the San Domingo people, who had lately made a suc- 
cessful insurrection, would "march, an army" to aid their 
struggle ; and Vesey had proclaimed amongst them that 
as soon as they had robbed the banks of their specie and 
the King street shops of their goods and got everything on 
board ship, they should then sail away to San Domingo 
to enjoy their treasure. 

In conformity with the act of Assembly passed in 1740, 
when South Carolina was a province under the British 
government, a court was immediately convened, consist- 
ing of "Magistrates and Freeholders," to try all the ac- 
cused. The penalty prescribed by this act for insurrec- 
tion was death. There was a careful consideration of the 
evidence in every case. The whole number of the accused 
was one hundred and thirty-one, of whom thirty-five were 
hanged, thirty-seven banished beyond the limits of the 
United States, the rest were discharged as not being found 
guilty. On the 2d of July Denmark Yesey and five 
others of the ring-leaders suffered death by hanging. Im- 
mense crowds of whites and blacks were present at the 
scene. On the 26th day of July I saw distinctly, from 
the third-story window of my father's house in upper King 
street, not far from the scene, a long gallows erected on 
"The Lines," and on it twenty-two negroes hanged at one 
time. I might say that the whole city turned out on this 



MY CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH. 



53 



occasion, and this was certainly a sight calculated to strike 
terror into the heart of every slave. Among these twenty- 
two, there was one of the leaders, whose name was Jack 
Pritchard. Being a gullah negro, he was commonly 
known as Gullah Jack. In Africa he had been known as 
of the family of conjurers inheriting by descent the 
powers belonging to his forefathers. With all these he 
was still accredited after being brought to Charleston as 
a slave. It was his claim no white man could arrest him, 
nor was he liable to death at any white man's hand. 

All these facts which I have here stated I get from an 
old pamphlet, in my possession, published at the time, 
which appears to be, in some sense, an official account of 
the whole matter. 

I must quote a paragraph from its pages, as I draw 
to a close. In speaking of the negroes, who were led to 
engage in this attempt, the writer says, "It was distinctly 
proved that with scarcely an exception they had no in- 
dividual hardship to complain of, and were amongst the 
most humanely treated negroes in our city. The facilities 
for combining and confederating in such a scheme were 
amply afforded by the extreme indulgence and kindness, 
which characterizes the domestic treatment of our slaves. 
Many slave-owners among us, not satisfied with minister- 
ing to the wants of their domestics by all the comforts of 
abundant food and excellent clothing, with a misguided 
benevolence have not only permitted their instruction, but 
lent to such efforts their approbation and applause. Re- 
ligious fanaticism has not been without its effect on this 
project, and, as auxiliary to these sentiments, the seces- 
sion of a large body of blacks from the white Methodist 
church, with feelings of irritation and disappointment, 
formed a hot-bed, in which the germ might well be ex- 
pected to spring into life and vigor. Among the con- 
spirators a majority of them belonged to the 'African 
Church/ and among those executed were several who had 
been class-leaders. It is, however, due to the late head of 
their church (for since the late events the association has 
been voluntarily dissolved) and their deacons to say that, 
after the most diligent search and scouting, no evidence 
entitled to belief has been discovered against them. A 



54 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



hearsay rumor in relation to Morris Brown was traced far 
enough to end in its complete falsification." 

Upon these statements by the very intelligent author of 
this pamphlet I have some observations to make. 

I. In the first place, he is quite right speaking of the 
kindness with which our slaves in Charleston, and I may 
say, throughout South Carolina, were generally treated. 
I feel perfectly sure that the duties of the relation of 
master and slave amongst us were just as well performed 
as those of human relations in general. To say no more, 
it was for the interest of the master to treat his slaves 
well. I have personally known a lady, not at all more 
humane or kind-hearted than women generally, to sit up 
alone night after night, nursing a valuable slave, sick with 
typhoid fever. It was to her interest to see that the 
proper medicine was given at the proper time, and that 
nothing should be wanting to preserve the life of her val- 
uable servant. Let outsiders say what they will, masters 
and slaves, throughout the whole South generally, occu- 
pied very kindly relations to one another. It is enough to 
point to the good behavior of the Southern slaves in gen- 
eral during the late war, when the masters were nearly 
all at the front, they stood as the guardians and protectors 
of mistress and her children. 

II. But, in the second place, it was no "misguided be- 
nevolence" which led many slave-owners, not only to fur- 
nish their domestics with abundant food and comfortable 
clothing, but also to permit their instruction in reading 
and writing by their owm children and others, but even to 
give such efforts their well-merited applause. These in- 
telligent slaveholders held rightly that light is better than 
darkness — that the ignorance of the slave was more dan- 
gerous, as well as more unprofitable, than his intelligence. 
Who does not see that, if the bulk of his followers had been 
sufficiently educated to see how vain his attempt was, 
they never could have been persuaded to join in it ? 

III. In the third place, it appears to me the writer is 
mistaken as to there being much, if any, religious fanati- 
cism at the bottom of this attempted insurrection. Yesey, 
it seems, grossly perverted Scripture in removing the 
scruples of his religious followers ; but so also many of 



MY CHILDHOOD AND EAELY YOUTH. 



55 



the Northern abolitionsts, who would justly he very in- 
dignant at being called religious fanatics, grossly pervert 
the Scriptures to make them condemn slaveholding. 
Neither Denmark Vesey nor any of his most earnest fol- 
lowers seem to me to have been religious fanatics. They 
wanted their freedom, which is the natural desire of all 
men. He had his freedom. But he wanted also blood 
and booty, and that he might get off with a load of specie 
and other valuables to San Domingo. I do not believe 
that that African church was the centre of the movement 
for insurrection. The writer distinctly acknowledges 
that Morris Brown and his deacons were proved to be in- 
nocent of any complicity in it. But the people of Charles- 
ton very naturally were under very great excitement, and 
it was almost inevitable that their suspicions should at- 
tach to that poor African church. As will appear in a 
subsequent chapter, I was to learn, at a future time, how 
sensitive public sentiment in our good old city had been 
rendered by this attempt at insurrection respecting any 
separate organization of the negroes for religious instruc- 
tion, even when it was to be given by white teachers alone. 
After a quarter of a century that poor, little Africa q 
church, under good Morris Brown and his worthy coadju- 
tors, was to loom up, and be held forth as having been a 
most dangerous institution, in order to create prejudice 
against an honest attempt to give safe, sound and Scrip- 
tural instruction to our slaves by white teachers of native 
growth and every way competent qualifications. 



CHAPTER III. 



Academy and College Life. 
1824-1828. 

ON THE 11th day of July, 1824, when I was thir- 
teen years seven months old, I was sent from 
Charleston with my younger brother, James, to Kinder- 
hook, to my father's two half-sisters, in order that we 
might attend the academy at that place. That academy 
had some considerable reputation. The idea then pre- 
vailed with many in our Southern country, and especially 
in Charleston, that schools at the North were far superior 
to ours. In addition to this idea my parents supposed 
that the change of climate would develop my constitution, 
for I was at that time rather small for my age. The view 
perhaps proved to be correct, but the Kinderhook Acad- 
emy was in no ways superior, if indeed it was equal, to 
the Charleston school from which I had been taken. The 
principal in his prime must have been a competent 
teacher, but in 1824 he was a worn-out old man, exceed- 
ingly near-sighted and very absent-minded, besides being 
an inveterate and voracious and very disgusting chewer 
of tobacco. While hearing a class in Latin or Greek, he 
would hold the text-book close up to his eyes and then 
stroll diagonally across the school-room to the door and 
then back again to his position, opening the door every 
time he got to it, that he might squirt the tobacco juice 
out of his mouth, while some of it would run down upon 
his beard and upon his shirt bosom. Such was the 
teacher ; as to the scholars, while a number of them were 
much older and a great deal bigger than the Southern 
boys, not one of them was more advanced than the older 
of the two in Latin or Greek. 

The most notable circumstance of my life at Kinder- 
hook Academy was that I there met a little Dutch boy, 
six years of age, who subsequently became one of the most 
distinguished men of our time. He was in the second or 



ACADEMY AND COLLEGE LIFE. 



57 



English department of the Academy, and being my junior 
by about seven years, my personal acquaintance with him 
was slight, He was small for his age, but very handsome, 
and bore himself with such sturdy, but not saucy, inde- 
pendence as made me feel even then, that he was a char- 
acter. About the year 1840, at the age of twenty-two, he 
went as a missionary to Beirut in Syria, and died there at 
the age of seventy-seven. 

From the moment of his first arrival he made it his sole 
business to acquire the Arabic language, and to this end 
quit the society of all English-speaking people at Beirut, 
and sought for and found a home for some years amongst 
the Arabs themselves. This showed the regular Dutch 
material of which he was made. The result was that one 
who knew him well says he became such a master of 
Arabic as had no peer, and that his death leaves such a 
vacancy amongst Arabic scholars as will probably never 
be filled. He was long recognized by European savants, 
as the greatest living Arabic scholar. When he went to 
Berlin, the great German professors, who had given years 
to the study of the Oriental languages, soon perceived that 
they were in the presence of a master before whom they 
felt they were mere tyros. How could it be otherwise ? 
This man for more than fifty years, was not only devoted 
to the reading of Arabic in books, but to the speaking of 
it and the hearing of it spoken. His vocation in part was 
to preach in Arabic, and that duty he performed with the 
greatest success. He spoke the language like an Arab; 
and on one occasion, in the year 1860, when war raged in 
the Mt. Lebanon country, between the Druses and the 
Maronites, he came near losing his life because those into 
whose hands he had fallen could not believe him to be an 
American, but insisted that he belonged to the enemy be- 
cause he talked Arabic just like a native. 

But this man was not simply a master of Arabic, but a 
missionary physician, and so rendered very great service. 
He was also a chemist, mathematician, astronomer, and a 
profound Biblical scholar. He wrote several medical 
books in Arabic, among them one on diseases of the eye, 
so prevalent in the East. But the greatest work of his 
pen was his translation of the Bible into Arabic, which 



58 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



was begun by the lamented Eli Smith, and to which this 
man gave twelve years of continuous labor, esteemed to be 
one of the best translations in any language. It places 
the Word of God within the reach of one hundred millions 
of Mohammedans. 

Thus my youthful acquaintance of six years of age. 
whom all the Dutch boys at Kinderhook called "Little 
Kale," has, through divine grace, been enabled to act well 
his part in the history of the Christian Church of this 
nineteenth century, and has become known in Europe, 
America, and also Asia, as the Rev. Cornelius Van Alen 
Van Dyck, with a long string of titles at the end of his 
name. Certainly he was one to whom the words apply, 
"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from hence- 
forth; yea, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their 
labors and their works do follow them." 

I passed one year at the Kinderhook Academy. My 
father came on to see his sisters and his sons in our second 
summer there. The assistant teacher of the Academy, 
who was a cultivated gentleman, when consulted with by 
my father, thought it was advisable that I should be trans- 
ferred to Union College, Schenectady, applying for ad- 
mission to the sophomore class. This was certainly 
enough to demonstrate that seventy-one years ago Union 
College was by no means what it may rightfully claim to 
be in 1896. Else how otherwise could a little boy of fif- 
teen and a half years of age have been received with so 
little preparation as mine was into its sophomore class ? 
Still it had for its president even then the eminent and 
eloquent Rev. Dr. Eliphalet Xott ; and two of its profes- 
sors then were Alonzo Potter, subsequently Bishop of 
Pennsylvania, and Francis Wayland, afterwards pres- 
ident of Brown University, Rhode Island, both very 
superior men. 

My brother James was very unwilling to remain alone 
at Kinderhook Academy, and stubbornly averse to the 
idea of going any further in the study of the classics. 
His father found it impossible to refuse his persistent 
request to be taken home and set to work in his counting 
house, so he was taken back to Charleston, and duly in- 
stalled on a high stool at a desk with a big ledger spread 



ACADEMY A^D COLLEGE LIFE. 



59 



out before him full of old accounts, settled one or two 
scores of years previously. He was to go over these ac- 
counts and see if he could find any mistakes. He went 
energetically to work, and persevered with it laboriously, 
having the idea in his mind that a very important task 
had been committed to him. By way of variety he had a 
marking pot and brush with which to mark hundreds of 
bales of cotton. His industrious and exact and careful 
attention to these official duties gave our father very great 
satisfaction, foreseeing clearly what a man of business 
that boy would become. But it was not very long before 
a desire for the college education he had once despised 
came back upon him with tremendous force, and the 
strong-willed father again gave way to the persistent re- 
quest of his strong-willed son. He entered Charleston 
College, became an enthusiastic student of the ancient 
languages and achieved honorable distinction at his grad- 
uation. 

For his older brother to be got ready for Union College 
some preparation by the tailor was now become necessary. 
Hitherto the boy had worn a round jacket, but amongst 
other things a tail coat was now to be prepared for him. 
And such a tail coat as the Dutch tailor of Kinderhook 
did then construct ! It was short in the waist. It was 
short at the tail. What a figure he did cut when he put on 
that coat ! the recollection always makes me laugh now in 
my eighty-sixth year. But it was the first tail coat the 
boy had ever worn, and in his simplicity he felt that it 
constituted one long step towards manhood. So he went 
to Union College thus apparelled, and whenever he after- 
wards appeared along with other collegians in the streets 
of Schenectady (or old Durrip, as it was by them jocu- 
larly called), the small boys of the town, attracted partly 
by the shortness of his stature, and no doubt very largely 
by the shortness of the tail coat, would follow after, cry- 
ing out, "Look at the little student." I can't remember 
when, but suppose it could not have been very long before 
the "little student" became the master of a more respect- 
able tail coat. 

I stood successfully all the examination that was re- 
quired for admission into the sophomore class. But Dr. 



60 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



Nott, President of the College, influenced perhaps some- 
what by the diminutiveness of my appearance, discour- 
aged my father from leaving me there. He was certainly 
to be honored for giving this candid advice, for there was 
no great plentifulness of students there at this time. 
What affected the President's judgment much more was 
that I was a Southern boy. He strongly portrayed the 
very peculiar danger there was that as such I would be 
ruined. Dr. Nott was a wise and good man ; he had had 
considerable experience with Southern students. Such a 
number of them from other colleges, some "suspended" 
or "rusticated," and some even "expelled" for dissipation 
or other bad conduct, had come to Union College, and the 
President had graciously received them into his classes, 
that Union College had earned the sobriquet of "Botany 
Bay." But great was Dr. Nott's knowledge of human na- 
ture, especially in the young, and great was his delight 
in taking a young man who had been so disgraced, and, by 
judicious treatment, restoring him to self-respect and 
good behavior. Thus had he saved many a Southern 
youth. One such at Union College in my time was the 
celebrated statesman, Robert Toombs, of Georgia. But 
Dr. "Nott was persuaded that one so young and inexperi- 
enced as I, would certainly be in very special danger. My 
father, however, seemed to have very great confidence in 
his little son, and so it was decided that I should remain. 
He said very little to me, but I remember that his last 
words were, "Now, don't learn to smoke or chew or any 
other bad habit." 

But it was not very long before my father received a 
letter from Dr. Nott, which must have made him appre- 
hensive that his leaving me at college was a mistake. The 
letter informed him that his son had been found guilty 
of having liquor in his room, and a carousing party there 
at unseasonable hours of the night. The truth of the 
business was that during the examination held at the close 
of my first session in college, when I had got nearly 
through, and in a day or two vacation was to begin, a 
young man who was in the same class with my room-mate, 
came up to chat a little with his friend. This young man 
was named Reid, and was from Poughkeepsie, on the 



ACADEMY AIs T D COLLEGE LIFE. 



61 



Hudson river. Mrs. Dr. ~Nott was from that same place, 
and this young man was, therefore, well known to the 
President. It was also understood that he was to become 
an Episcopal minister. My room-mate was a member of 
the Dutch Eef ormed Church, a decided Christian, and he 
also was destined to the ministry. After chatting with 
us for awhile, Reid, who was quite youthful, and of a 
social and lively disposition, said, "I have some fresh 
eggs in my room ; suppose I bring them up here, and we 
scramble them in a tin plate, and we enjoy ourselves. 
This was the beginning of the affair. One and another of 
our fellow-students dropped in before the scrambling, and 
then it was thought advisable that we should have some- 
thing to eat with the eggs, and so I, with one other of the 
party, went over to the steward's hall, and bought a large 
apple-pie — I, being the Southern boy, probably furnishing 
the money. By the time we got back two or three more 
students had dropped in, and somehow or other, but I 
don't know how, a supply of whiskey had also been ob- 
tained. One of the last arrivals was Beall, a young Mary- 
lander, who was full of life and fun, and who made con- 
siderable noise at the entertainment. How many of the 
seven or eight present partook of the whiskey I cannot 
say ; but I feel sure my Dutch room-mate was not one of 
them, and I know that I didn't taste it. I have always 
been constitutionally averse to spirits of any kind. But 
to tell the truth, young Reid took enough of it to become a 
little hilarious, and then insisted on making a very bois- 
terous speech. Of course, Dr. Potter, the professor who 
had charge of our section of the college building, and who 
occupied a part of it with his family, must have heard 
the uproar, and no doubt he must have come and looked in 
upon our merriment. And so, no doubt, next morning 
we were all reported to the President. 

That day as I passed the President's study he was just 
coming out of it, and so he took me by the arm and we 
walked together to the next college building. He was ex- 
ceedingly kind and fatherly in talking with me, but dwelt 
on liquor being introduced into college as a very serious 
wrong. I don't remember if I told him that I had not in- 
troduced it nor even tasted it. I know that I accused no- 



62 MY LIFE A^D TIMES. 

body else ; all I remember was saying to him, "But, Doc- 
tor, it was only a little." "Ah! but, my son," he said, 
with his hand on my shoulder, "it is the principle that I 
look at." Here was a distinction made of the utmost im- 
portance, which I daresay never before occurred to me. 
I have always looked back upon that conversation with 
gratitude to the old President. That was all he said to 
me, but he added another kindness to me in communicat- 
ing his views of the matter, as he understood it, to my 
father. The paternal rebuke which I got was also very 
kind, expressing great surprise and keen disappointment 
that I should have "held a wine party in my room." Of 
course my reply must have given my father great satisfac- 
tion, as I sent him a full, frank and correct statement of 
the case. 

But the sequel, I must say, did not seem to me alto- 
gether honorable in the President. At the beginning of 
every new session, when we returned to college, after 
vacation, we always found hung up in a conspicuous place 
what was called the Merit Roll. It contained the names 
of the several classes separately written alphabetically, 
so that my name appeared almost at the head of the soph- 
omore class. Then there were five distinct columns, 
marked at the head of the first, Conduct ; the second, At- 
tendance, and the other three, the names of the three 
studies of the previous session. In each of these columns 
every student found opposite to his own name, publicly 
held forth, what had been his relative standing the pre- 
vious session. The highest grade, which we call Maxi- 
mum, was one hundred, any figure below ninety was 
rather disgraceful. I had reason to expect that I would 
not get quite one hundred in point of conduct, and so I 
was not surprised at all to be put down at ninety-nine. 
But I did consider it rather hard that my room-mate, who 
was a mature man, while I was a little boy, was made to 
stand at one hundred in conduct, and that young Reid was 
made to occupy the same honorable position. It was 
taken for granted that the Southern boy must be one of 
the guilty, but the two young preachers were to be let off. 
I never met either of these two again. 

The Southern boy was never involved in any other 



ACADEMY AxN E> COLLEGE LIFE. 



63 



scandal during the whole of his course. For this there 
was one cause that was quite adequate for such an effect. 
A great moral change came over me during the next sum- 
mer. I have reason to believe that I came under the 
power of regenerating grace. This was in my sixteenth 
year, and four or hve others of my class appeared to be 
affected in the same way. A brief account of this event 
will be interesting and perhaps profitable. I was just a 
light-hearted boy, by no means very studious, maintaining 
a tolerable stand at recitation, quite happy in my relation 
to all my college friends, and very well satisfied on the 
whole with myself. One day I got to the dining hall 
quite late, and there were very few students still at their 
dinner, but I very soon discovered that they were all a 
good deal agitated about something. Upon inquiring of 
one what was the matter, the answer was, a Why, that fel- 
low McDowell is going about talking to everybody on the 
subject of religion." How well do I remember the terror 
which immediately filled my soul, and how unwilling I 
was to have this discovered by others. So I assumed the* 
air of one who has nothing to be afraid of, and boldly de- 
clared, "If he dares to speak to me, I will tell him I think 
on that subject for myself." I vainly imagined that this 
should be a perfect shield against McDowell's approach. 
But then McDowell never approached me, and I had to 
go to McDowell. I fully believe the Holy Spirit was begin- 
ning his work in me with that first shock of mortal terror. 

Who was McDowell ? A student some twenty-five years 
old, in the sophomore class with me, and who always sat 
right beside me in the class-room, and of whom I had had 
no dread until I heard the appalling news that he was 
talking of personal religion to some of our class-mates. 
Well do I remember how, some two or three months be- 
fore this, as I sat one Sunday in the gallery of the Pres- 
byterian church at Schenectady, I heard the minister, the 
Rev. Dr. Erskine Mason, say some words about the neces- 
sity of every one being converted and becoming a Chris- 
tion. But I quickly put aside what he uttered with the 
thought in my heart that I was too young to be concerned 
about that matter. But that day at dinner in the hall 
there came upon me an influence shaking out of me in one 



64 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



moment every particle of indifference, and dispelling for- 
ever all my fancied security. 

John R. McDowell was a poor young man from Can- 
ada, dressed in a suit of clothes hardly decent, who, we 
understood, got his boarding and tuition for the service 
of ringing the college bell with careful punctuality at 
every recitation, and for prayers in the early morning. 
The room that was given him was a miserable apartment, 
a kind of long corridor in the second story of a wing in 
the college building. He was put there to be close to the 
bell. Much older than the most of his class-mates he was 
by no means in advance of them in our studies. And then 
he halted in his walk, being somewhat lame in one leg. 
Look now at this picture. There was nothing in the cir- 
cumstances or appearance of John R. McDowell to 
awaken our respect, in fact there was much calculated to 
make us thoughtless boys look down upon him. But he 
was a holy man of God, a thoroughly earnest Christian, 
and therefore his personal deformity, his poverty, his old 
clothes, his want of any superior claims to talent or edu- 
cation, set him before us all in the same light in which 
Paul, the poor tent-maker, and all the other humble apos- 
tles of our Lord, stood before the rich and the great in 
Jerusalem, Asia Minor, Greece and Borne. 

This man McDowell, as I said, never addressed me a 
word on the subject of religion, but there was a higher 
power operating within my soul. The conviction that I 
was a sinner took strong hold of me. I scarcely thought 
of anything else, and yet I managed to get my lessons and 
recite them about as well as ever. But I spent my leisure 
hours in reading the Bible, or conferring with a few of 
my classmates and others affected in the same manner 
as myself ; or else betaking myself to the fields behind the 
college, I strolled about in solitary prayer. 

One day, when alone with my new room-mate, Peter 
Henry Sylvester, of Kinderhook, a class-mate of his 
called. This young man, a number of years my senior, 
was very fond of me, in fact made me a pet, and fre- 
quently took me on his knee. He was a fine, manly fel- 
low, tall and handsome, from Central, !N~ew York State. 
I admired him greatly. His name was Rufus AY. Peck- 



ACADEMY A1STD COLLEGE LIFE. 



65 



ham. He became an eminent lawyer, prominent member 
of Congress, but he was drowned many years afterwards, 
when the steamship Arctic went down in the Atlantic, 
with so many of her passengers. He has a son and name- 
sake now sitting in the Supreme Court of the United 
States. This friend of mine occupied a room immedi- 
ately opposite to mine. He began talking, as soon as he 
was seated, with Sylvester, about the man McDowell. He 
said his room-mate did nothing but read the Bible and 
pray since McDowell had been talking to him. Then he 
turns to me, continuing his talk, and says, "Why, Adger, 
I hear that you are one of them." I do not remember 
what answer I made him, but rose almost immediately 
and went across to his room, where I found my class-mate, 
David H. Little, brushing his own shoes. I said to him, 
"Little, where are you going V He answered, "I am 
going over to McDowell's room to attend a prayer-meet- 
ing.' 7 ' I had never heard of this prayer-meeting before, 
but immediately said, "I will go with you." So we 
started together. Just in front of the college, as we issued 
forth, there was a muster and drill of a company of cadets 
of the college, which Dr. !N~ott encouraged us all to join. 
Little and I were both members, but our places in the 
muster that afternoon were vacant. I felt sure that our 
companions in the drill observed us, and knew whither we 
were going. But the power that was working within 
made me bold and indifferent to whatever they might 
think. That was my first visit to McDowell's prayer- 
meeting in his poor, miserable quarters. I went regularly 
after that. My distress of mind continued for about a 
fortnight. Prominent in their attendance at this meeting 
were a number of students, nearly or quite all of them 
full-grown men, apparently between twenty-three and 
twenty-eight years of age, all backward in their education 
and noted for their low stand in their classes, poorly clad, 
and, like McDowell himself, not held in much personal 
respect by the students generally. But they were good 
men and consistent followers of Christ, and all took their 
part alternately in the conduct of the prayer-meeting. 
One afternoon in great distress, sitting away off in one 
corner of McDowell's long apartment, listening to all that 



66 MY LIFE AND TIMES. 

was said, I heard some one speaking of that passage of 
Scripture, "We know that we have passed from death 
unto life, because we love the brethren/' when, lo ! imme- 
diately the hope sprang up in my heart, as I looked at the 
crowd of these poor disciples, that I also "must have 
passed from death unto life," because assuredly I do love 
these despised brethren. This made me feel very happy. 
I believed that I was justified by faith, and therefore I 
had peace with God through Jesus Christ my Lord. My 
j^eace, however, was not very long-continued. A great 
darkness came over my soul. I gave up all hope that my 
sins had been forgiven, and again I began to. feel, as I had 
done before, that I was on the brink of everlasting ruin. 
Again and again I dare not lay my head at night upon 
my pillow, lest if I should fall asleep I might wake up in 
the abyss. In my great distress I had recourse to Mc- 
Dowell. It was evening. I went to his room, he prayed 
with me and talked with me, but I was not relieved ; he 
left me after awhile to go down into the town, where he 
was holding a prayer-meeting. I sat by his lamp and read 
the Bible and tried to pray. When he returned I was in 
the same condition; again he essayed for a long time to 
help me, but in vain. At last, being worn out himself and 
obliged to ring the bell punctually early in the morning, 
he retired to his bed, but I continued to sit by his lamp, 
seeking to find again the hope that I had lost. A long 
time I remained in that same despairing state of mind. I 
was reluctant to return to my own room, as it was very 
late at night. At last I was exhausted by excitement and 
fatigue; My poor friend's bed did not look very inviting, 
it was quite alive with previous occupants — I saw them 
plainly — but I was not in a condition to be deterred by 
such circumstances, and so I threw myself down by his 
side and slept till his bell aroused me, when I repaired to 
my own quarters. 

These alternations of darkness and light, of doubts and 
hopes continued, as is usual with young believers, for 
some time. After a few months I was received upon pro- 
fession of faith as a member of the Presbyterian church 
in Schenectady. My room-mate, Sylvester, and my spe- 
cial friend Peckham ended their course, and I then be- 



ACADEMY AND COLLEGE LIFE. 



67 



came a room-mate with David H. Little, and we remained 
together until we were both graduated in 1828. 

I look back upon my college course with much dissatis- 
faction. True, I have great reason to be thankful that it 
was then and there that I received, as I trust, my first per- 
sonal experience of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But, 
speaking of my three years' course there as to educational 
improvement, it was certainly a failure. The truth is, I 
was not prepared to go to college. According to the stan- 
dard of preparation for the sophomore in Union at that 
period, I had knowledge enough perhaps of the English 
language, as well as of the Latin and Greek. But I was 
a mere boy as to my development of character, mind — yes, 
a mere child as to the knowledge of men and things, and 
I spent my three years there to very little purpose. I 
never made a serious effort at study, and I may say lost 
most of the advantages of the course, being graduated be- 
fore I was eighteen years old. I must say with gratitude 
to Professor Wayland, that he made a personal effort on 
one occasion to rouse me up to some sense of the value of 
my opportunities. I was sawing a log of wood for my 
stove, after recitation hours. He stepped out of his study, 
came up to me familiarly, took the saw out of my hand, 
finished the cutting, and then said to me, "Adger, why 
were you not better prepared with your lesson this morn- 
ing ?" and he then gave me a very kind and fatherly lec- 
ture on being more diligent. I must also record here my 
sincere thankfulness for his earnest and delightful relig- 
ious instructions to a number of us, whom he met occa- 
sionally in one of our rooms. In justice also to Dr. Nott, 
I must acknowledge that his instructions to the senior 
class (the text-book, strange to say, being none other than 
Lord Karnes' Elements of Criticism) were made by him 
the occasion of giving us what I think we all valued more 
than anything else in the whole course, viz., many practi- 
cal lessons as to human nature, and the best way of deal- 
ing with men and succeeding in all affairs. Dr. ITott 
was a great and good man. But after I left college and 
began to think and observe for myself, I came to under- 
stand that these instructions were lessons more of policy 
than of principle, and I became sensible of a very strong 



68 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



reaction in my mind against his teachings. I was led to 
renounce entirely his doctrine of expediency, and it is 
my honest opinion, candidly written here, that if in my 
public course I have been frequently led into the mainte- 
nance of extreme opinions, one cause has been disgust 
with the timid and selfish spirit that always seeks some 
middle ground. I do not forget what Macaulay tells us 
of the Marquis of Halifax, who, when taunted with being 
a trimmer, replied, a Yes, I trim between extremists, as 
the Temperate zone between the Torrid and the Frigid." 
This is just like what the "Moderates" of the Church of 
Scotland said of themselves. I count it a great compli- 
ment which my venerable colleague at Columbia Semi- 
nary, Dr. George Howe, paid me, when he said, "Adger 
is a man that has no disguises." The astute old President 
of Union College was the father of many !N"ew York poli- 
ticians. The famous William H. Seward, Secretary of 
State in 1861, was one of them. When I was a boy at 
college, Mr. Seward came there once, a young and rising 
lawyer of Central !New York ; he came on a visit to his 
college society, of which I was a member. I gave him an 
invitation to ride in a buggy with me to the Cohoes Tails, 
seven miles from Schenectady. He honored me by ac- 
cepting. I have often thought what a change there might 
have been in the history of the United States if I had 
happened unfortunately to upset the buggy and broken 
Seward's neck. Possibly there had been no "irrepressible 
conflict" in our country between free and slave labor, and 
possibly no war between the States. 

And so it turned out, in the good providence and 
through the grace of God, that the venerable President's 
apprehensions that the little Southern boy, not yet fifteen 
years old, would be ruined if his father should leave him 
at college were not fulfilled. The boy learned neither to 
use profane language, nor to love whiskey, nor to gamble, 
nor to practise any other ordinary vices of a dissipated 
college life. Here I must relate a circumstance, occurring 
many years after my boyhood. I had been a missionary 
in Turkey for twelve years, but was at home and sitting 
at dinner in my father's house. He had several gentle- 
men guests at his table, and while I sat near to my mother, 



ACADEMY AND COLLEGE LIFE. 



69 



who was at the head of the table, I could overhear the 
conversation of the gentlemen at the other end. They 
were discussing the best way to raise boys. My father 
was denouncing the too common practice at that time of 
Southern gentlemen to give the boy his pocket full of cash 
and set him on a pony with a gun in his hand as the sure 
road to his ruin, and I even heard him boasting a little 
of his success in bringing up his son, although he had to 
send him away from home at an early age. One point he 
made was that I was not allowed pocket money. Being 
young and inexperienced and far from home, he had 
taken Dr. Nott's advice to remit all money for my ex- 
penses at college to the treasurer of the institution, who 
would see to my necessary wants. Then I spoke, and all 
were ready to listen to my testimony. I modestly re- 
marked that I did not think this money arrangement had 
worked so very successfully. I stated that under the ar- 
rangement I still always had as much money in my pocket 
as I wanted. I would go to Captain Holland, the treas- 
urer, from time to time, and he would give me ten, fifteen 
or twenty dollars, just as I pleased. But I added that I 
could tell my father what, far more than the lack of 
pocket money, was the reason why his boy had not been 
ruined at college. All looked and listened. Then I said, 
"It was simply breed/ 7 then all laughed, the old gentle- 
man included. 



CHAPTER IV. 



Theological Seminary Life. — Our Marriage and 
Sailing for Smyrna. — My Wife's Ancestry. 
1829-1834. 

IMMEDIATELY after commencement was over at 
Union College, in June, 1828, having delivered my 
little speech and taken leave of college friends, I set out 
with a class-mate named Benjamin Burroughs, of Savan- 
nah, to visit Niagara Falls. I had been to the Falls once 
before with my father and mother, when our family and 
that of Thomas Fleming, Esq., of Philadelphia, my fa- 
ther's particular friend, had made the trip together from 
Albany in a passenger canal boat. The great Governor 
of New York, De Witt Clinton, had recently accomplished 
his great work, the Erie Canal, thus connecting Buffalo 
City by water all the way with Xew York. These pas- 
senger boats gave us tolerably comfortable accommoda- 
tions, a table for our meals in the day time, and at night 
berths rigged up for sleeping. It was a novel way of 
travelling, but very slow, the whole journey of over three 
hundred miles being performed at a slow trot by a couple 
of horses driven along the canal bank and dragging the 
boat after them. It occupied, if I remember rightly, 
about three days. There were frequent "locks" to be 
filled, which occupied much time. These locks were 
built of very solid masonry, each one long enough and 
wide enough to receive a canal boat. The boat would 
enter a lock, and its lower gate being closed on the boat, 
water would be let into the lock by degrees from the upper 
gate, and so the boat would be raised some ten or fifteen 
feet, then the upper gates would be opened and the horses 
beginning again to drag, we were enabled gradually to 
surmount the highlands which separated Buffalo from 
Albany. Of course, these passenger boats have long since 
been withdrawn from the canal, but I suppose the freight 



THEOLOGICAL SEMIS" ABY LIFE. 



71 



boats have continued during all these seventy years to 
bring down heavy freights from the Great Lakes to the 
Atlantic ocean. 

My friend Burroughs and I didn't fancy canal-boat 
travelling. We wanted to make the trip by stage, and 
so we got the opportunity of riding through beautiful 
Western r\ew York, and being charmed with its many ele- 
gant villages. We had the company, the pleasant and 
profitable company, of Alonzo Porter, Esq., of Savannah, 
and his beautiful wife, and we boys enjoyed ourselves 
unspeakably. 

If I remember rightly this trip had been suggested to 
me by my father, for I still possess a letter from him 
giving me many hints and much advice about what I 
should try and see during the journey, so as to obtain the 
greatest benefit from the same. Once before this, during 
my college course, he had arranged for me to go with his 
friend, and subsequently my friend, Judge Mitchell King, 
of Charleston, who was on his way to attend the com- 
mencement at Yale College. That was the only time I 
ever saw the beautiful city of iSTew Haven, and all the 
grand doings at a Yale commencement. The city was 
beautiful indeed, and the commencement was grand in- 
deed, though both the city and the college, now the Uni- 
versity, have become, of course, very much grander. Oh ! 
the kindness of my father to me ! by no means appreciated 
then, in my thoughtless bovhood, but understood now, in 
some measure, as I review my life from the beginning, 
re-reading some of his old letters and recalling to mind 
many of his special favors to me, and wondering often- 
times how I could have failed at the time to perceive and 
estimate it, and bitterly lamenting how much his exalted 
hopes respecting me must have been disappointed. I feel 
sure I was his favorite son at the beginning and for many 
years, but that subsequently he came to appreciate both 
William first, and then Kobert, deservedly far above me. 

I spent the winter and well-nigh the whole year sub- 
sequent to my graduation chiefly at home in Charleston, 
but it was not profitably spent; indeed, very far from 
profitably. I think, as I look back, that I did not grow 
either in knowledge or in grace ; nevertheless I was led, 



72 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



I hope I may trust, by the Divine Spirit, to a fixed con- 
clusion that it was my duty to submit myself to a train- 
ing for the gospel ministry. Accordingly, in September, 
1829, I entered the Theological Seminary at Princeton, 
where I spent almost four years. I found myself here in 
a very different atmosphere from that either of my college 
or my Charleston life. My fellow-students were all de- 
voted to the acquisition of sacred learning, and the culti- 
vation of the spiritual life. Many of them were very 
godly men. Religious truth filled the very air. Our con- 
versations were all about the Scriptures. I was thrown 
into the company and fell under the influence of a num- 
ber of young men of a deeper Christian experience and a 
loftier tone of piety than I had ever met. The professors, 
Drs. Alexander and Miller and Hodge, impressed me as 
no other Christian ministers had ever done, i^ot only 
their profound learning, but the saintliness of their char- 
acter, filled me with awe. The religious exercises in the 
Seminary, even those where the professors took no part, 
were of a sort that I had never previously attended. It 
was not long before I was led to doubt whether I was any 
way fit to be there. My distress soon came to be un- 
bearable. I abandoned altogether the hope I had been 
cherishing, that I was a Christian. It was a dreadful 
experience. I gave up all study and betook myself to 
prayer. After a period of great darkness the Lord re- 
vealed himself to me, and I found peace. It was the 
beginning for me of a new religious life. 

I have often questioned whether what I have just now 
said is strictly true ; certainly I did not now begin to lead 
a truly holy life, although religious truth did certainly 
affect me in many ways more than it had previously done. 
Perhaps I might say I became a better Christian, but I 
was really a very poor sort of a Christian any way. It 
was then my belief that I had never been converted before, 
and that all my previous religious experiences had been 
absolutely vain and worthless. That is not my judgment 
now, as I look back upon the whole course of my life ; for 
if I am to renounce all my religious experiences before I 
went to Princeton because they were so miserably de- 
ficient, I must, to be consistent, also renounce those that 



THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY LIFE. 



73 



followed what I may call my second conversion, because 
they too have always been certainly miserably deficient. 
The Christian life is a journey of many steps. We have 
to rise from a low plane first to one that is higher, but 
still not high. We have to go from step to step, rising 
from plane" to plane, still never reaching the height of 
true and perfect holiness. We are made perfect only at 
death. In the Spirit's work of sanctification, except 
where it is suspended during our periods of spiritual 
slumbering and sleeping, we die more and more every day 
unto sin, and we live more and more every day unto 
righteousness. Then, oh! blessed consummation, the 
souls of believers, being in death made perfectly holy, do 
pass immediately into glory. 

Princeton Seminary, some seventy years ago, when I 
attended there, had only one three-story dormitory build- 
ing, with Dr. Alexander's dwelling on the righthand of 
it, and Dr. Hodge's on the left. Dr. Miller's house was 
in the town, and a number of the students also had their 
lodgings and found their boarding in the town. Usually 
two, sometimes three, students occupied one room in the 
dormitory building. I had my quarters there at the first, 
and got my meals in the Refectory, where most of the 
students ate. But I found it a bad plan. Eating our food 
gregariously was not wholesome. Most of the students had 
dyspepsia, and I did not escape till I quit the hall and 
went to board in a private family in the town. What 
added greatly to the evil was the publication at that very 
time of a work entitled Dyspepsia Forestalled and Re- V 
siMed. I think the author's name was Hitchcock. Among 
other features were the most precise directions as to how 
much a man should eat and drink in a day, so many 
ounces of food and drink. With a particular friend of 
mine, a dear and charming fellow, by name Montgomery 
Harris, from Baltimore, who finished his ministerial 
course early, I had frequent consultations about dyspepsia 
and these rules of Hitchcock, in fact we agreed together 
to measure out our food and drink according to these 
rules, and to stand by them for one fortnight. We got 
through alive, but it nearly killed both of us. I found 
out afterwards that when our Saviour says, "Therefore 



74 MY LIFE AND TIMES. 

take no thought, saying, what shall we eat, or what shall 
we drink/' his words may well be understood and applied 
literally. Nothing disturbs digestion more effectually 
than anxious thinking or talking about dietetic rules. It 
is good now as in apostolic times to eat what is set before 
us, asking no question. 

The professors at Princeton in my day were only three 
in number, but they were as good in every respect as 
could be found at that time in this country. Indeed, all 
things considered, no three better professors can, in my 
judgment, be found now in any of the numerous institu- 
tions of learning and religion all over the land. Dr. Arch- 
ibald Alexander, formerly a minister in Virginia, stood 
then at the head of all the theologians of the Presbyterian 
Church in America. His natural endowments could not 
be surpassed ; he was a learned and thoroughly sound 
theologian, and he had all the sagacity and wisdom neces- 
sary to fit him to preside over a school where a hundred 
and twenty young men were preparing for the ministry. 
Above all he was a holy man of God. His wife, born Janet 
Waddell, was the daughter of the celebrated blind 
preacher of that name in Virginia, whom Wirt, in his 
British Spy, has so eloquently described. They had sev- 
eral sons who rose to eminence, among whom was Joseph 
Addison Alexander, whose preeminent intellectual abil- 
ities, varied and profound learning, and extraordinary 
pulpit qualifications, made him superior to most and in- 
ferior perhaps to no one of his brethren. 

Old Dr. Alexander was not only by birth a Southerner, 
but in all the characteristic features of our people. He 
was a simple-hearted, straightforward man. In his old 
age, which was when I knew him, his nervous system was 
very subject to the influences of the east wind. We 
youngsters always knew when the wind was blowing from 
that quarter the moment we looked at the Professor's face 
when he entered the lecture-room. He must have been, 
I suppose, under one of these spells when the following 
incident occurred. There was a student from South Car- 
olina, a very conscientious and good man, to whom all his 
brethren looked up with reverence, not of his intellect, but 
of his heart. He was unusually advanced as to age, while 



THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY EIFE. 



75 



as to zeal and piety he was, as it were, the leader, not only 
of his own class, but all the Seminary. He had taken 
up the idea of total abstinence from all intoxicating 
drinks in its extremest form. It became known in the 
Seminary that the old Doctor denied the soundness of this 
principle. The venerable student's zeal aspired to the 
conversion of his teacher. The Doctor patiently con- 
ferred with him two or three days, but remained impreg- 
nable to the logic of his zealous visitor. On the third day, 
so the story goes, the east wind was specially rough, the 

Professor's patience forsook him, "Mr. B ," said he, 

"I made up my mind on this subject before you were 

born." This argument silenced Brother B , and he 

retired from the contest. 

Dr. Samuel Miller, the professor of Church History 
and Polity, was a perfect gentleman of the old school in 
manners and character. He was well fitted to publish 
his work on Clerical Manners and Habits. He was also 
a sound Presbyterian, and his book on the eldership is a 
most valuable volume. Before he was made professor at 
Princeton he had been one of the leading ministers of 
~New York City at a time when those words signified a 
great deal more of what is respectable than they do now. 
He was greatly revered by all us students for his urban- 
ity, learning and piety. If he could appear now in the 
midst of the Presbytery of New York just as he looked 
and as he was when I last saw him, I fear he would 
neither recognize nor be recognized by the majority of 
that body. 

The two old professors differed not much in age, but 
the habits of their life were very different. Dr. Miller 
was very regular and methodical in all his ways. He 
regularly took his constitutional walks. Old Dr. Alex- 
ander almost never left his study. When I have seen him 
at great intervals of time slowly walking through the 
" streets of Princeton, it was amusing to observe how, as he 
strolled along, he would look at every house and almost 
every object on the street, just as you might expect a 
man who had not for twelve months seen anything but the 
books in his library. It was said that Dr. Miller fre- 
quently remonstrated with him for neglecting to go out 



76 



MY LIFE A1STD TIMES. 



• and get the fresh air and stretch his limbs, but his col- 
league always replied that "bodily exercise profiteth lit- 
tle." These two were grand old men. I was an occa- 
sional visitor in their families, and have to thank both 
of them for very great kindness to me. I went to Asia 
Minor after my four years' course in the Seminary, and 
three years afterwards, namely, in 1837, the Presbyte- 
rian Church was rent by the new school controversy, and 
the excision of four large Western synods. Before this 
took place, and while the controversy was still at its 
height, I received two very long autograph letters from 
good old Dr. Alexander, each letter consisting of eight 
pages about a foot long, and fully as wide, saying that, as 
I was in foreign lands, he would try and keep me posted 
as to what was going on. I still have these letters in my 
possession. 

Dr. Charles Hodge spent some time at the Universities 
in Germany before he entered on his professorship. Dur- 
ing my course at Princeton he was our teacher in He- 
brew and the Greek of the iTew Testament. I do not 
remember that, besides this latter, he gave us any special 
exegetical instruction. He was a very lovable man, mild 
and sweet and gentle with us all, but I do not think he 
was a good teacher. He roused in us no enthusiasm for 
either of the Bible languages, nor was he a good preacher. 
He gave the force of his mind, I think, to the study of 
theology. The new school controversy was then becom- 
ing quite earnest. Dr. Hodge was editor of the Biblical 
Repertory and Princeton Review. In these pages ap- 
peared many forcible articles from his pen. Professor 
Stuart, of Andover Seminary, published his Commen- 
tary on Romans, which took the .N"ew School side. Dr. 
Hodge at first reviewed with great ability Professor Stu- 
art's work, and then subsequently published his commen- 
tary on the same epistle, which, I believe, to a great extent 
neutralized the poison there was in the Andover book. It 
was a great success, and lifted Dr. Hodge at once to a 
high rank amongst theologians. Dr. Hodge treated me 
with great kindness, and so did his good wife, the first 
Mrs. Hodge. Well do I remember the future Dr. Archi- 
bald Hodge, a missionary first to India, and then the dis- 



THEOLOGICAL SEMIXAET LIFE. 



77 



tinguished successor of his father, as he used to run about 
the Seminary grounds a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, rosy- 
cheeked little boy of seven or eight summers, and one or 
two of his little brothers with him. Dr. Charles Hodge 
was a great theologian. His three ponderous volumes 
on Systematic Theology are a treasure to any of the thou- 
sand ministers who were his students while he lived, and 
should be to his students now that he is dead. But Dr. 
Hodge never studied the church polity of Presbyterian- 
ism. He never understood the subject. His debate with 
Dr. Thornwell in the Assembly at Rochester, the last one 
where the South and North portions of the church met 
together, exhibited this deficiency on the part of the great 
teacher. Much more apparent he made it when he under- 
took to discuss that debate in the Princeton Review; and 
when Dr. Thornwell replied to him in the Southern Pres- 
byterian Review, it became wofully palpable. Any one 
can see for himself what I have said, for both productions 
appear in the fourth volume of Dr. Thornwell's collected 
writings, where also appear the reports of their discus- 
sion in that last Assembly. That was an impressive occa- 
sion, the Northern church and her Southern sister coming 
together for the last time in the persons of their two lead- 
ing representatives, and taking their respective stands on 
very great ecclesiastical issues preparatory to their sep- 
aration. 

At Princeton I formed the acquaintance of quite a 
number of young men who subsequently played important 
parts on the stage of life. It was there I first saw Robert 
J. Breckinridge, though I did not become at all ac- 
quainted with him, neither was he one of those young men 
just referred to. He had become eminent at the bar, but 
was converted, gave up that profession and entered the 
Presbyterian ministry, and spent a few months at Prince- 
- ton, not as a student, but as a visitor. He was conferring, 
I suppose, with our professors about church matters. At 
Princeton I first knew C. C. Jones, the famous apostle to 
the negroes in Liberty county, Ga., afterwards a pro- 
fessor at Columbia Seminary, and subsequently the Home 
Missionary Secretary of the then undivided Presbyterian 
Church. I translated into the Armenian language and 



78 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



published at Smyrna, with certain alterations necessary 
to accommodate it to its new rise, the catechism of simple 
gospel truth which he wrote for his negro disciples. As 
a primary manual for Armenian inquirers and believers 
perhaps no book issued by our press in Smyrna could 
have been more acceptable or more useful. It seemed to 
furnish them just what they wanted to know about the 
fundamental principles of Protestant doctrine. At 
Princeton I also became acquainted pretty well with 
Henry A. Boardman, and, still better, with Cortlandt 
Van Rensselaer, both eminent afterwards as Presbyte- 
rian ministers. I had a room in the same private house 
Avith Van Rensselaer, and ate with him at the same table. 
He was one of Nature's noblemen. It was he whom, when 
high in ecclesiastical office as the Secretary of one of the 
Boards, and wielding deservedly wide influence all over 
the church from his well-known ability, but especially 
from his exalted character as a man, Dr. Breckinridge 
pronounced to be the most dangerous man in the Presby- 
terian Church — dangerous because, as he considered him, 
infected with the slack-twisted Presbyterianism still 
somewhat prevalent in the Old School party, after the 
excision of the New School body. Dr. Breckinridge 
meant this as the high compliment which it was. He 
greatly respected Yan Rensselaer, as did everybody else. 
I also became well acquainted with Nathan L. Rice, cele- 
brated afterwards all over the West for the various public 
controversies which he successfully maintained with 
Campbell and others, and even more famous perhaps for 
the distinguished part he played on the right side in the 
New School controversy of 1835, '36 and '37. Rice was 
my senior by several years, and had been for some time 
in the Presbyterian ministry before he came to Princeton. 
Of course, he was able to teach me, and he did teach me 
many things in theology I had not otherwise learned. 
Our acquaintance was intimate and proved very valuable 
to me. At Princeton I again met with my old Union Col- 
lege friend, John McDowell, the man of God of an humble 
spirit and a loving heart, but a fiery and yet most tender 
zeal. He distinguished himself as the apostle of the Five 
Points in New York City. Then there was John C. 



THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY LIFE. 



79 



Lowrie. He was for some years a missionary in India, or 
possibly in China, where his brother was killed by Chinese 
pirates. John C. Lowrie was afterwards Secretary for 
many years of the Northern Presbyterian Board of For- 
eign Missions, along with his father, the eminent Walter 
Lowrie, Esq., and also our John, Leighton Wilson. I was 
very intimate with both Armstrong and Alexander, who 
spent their lives as missionaries to the Sandwich Islands. 
Then there were Joseph Barr and John B. Pinney, who 
were sent out to Africa to explore the country with a view 
to returning afterwards and settling there as missionaries. 
Pinney was an enthusiastic Christian man, of fair edu- 
cation, and remarkable energy of character. I think he 
never became a missionary in Africa, but his whole life 
was devoted to work for that continent in some form or 
other. He was for many years Governor of the Liberian 
Republic of American negroes at Monrovia, on the coast 
of Africa. Joseph Barr was a much stronger man, full 
of foreign missionary zeal. He enthused us all on his 
return from his exploring trip by telling us of some mis- 
sionary to whom a heathen man once came, asking, "Are 
you Jesus Christ man ?" "My brethren/ 7 said Barr to us, 
"which of you would not be glad to go and be a Jesus 
Christ man amongst some heathen people, pointing out to 
them the way of salvation V 9 But Barr was never priv- 
ileged to go himself. A very short time after he returned 
from Africa, he was seized with fatal sickness and called 
up. I have not yet mentioned the name of Edward 
Tonge Buist, with whom I enjoyed one of the most 
intimate and profitable friendships I had at Princeton. 
His was a vigorous and active intellect, and he was very 
fond of discussion on theological points. We helped to 
sharpen in one another the spirit of inquiry and research, 
for, in after years, he frequently told me that mine was 
perhaps the most profitable friendship he had ever 
formed. He and I were partners in a Sunday-school, in 
conducting which we alternated every Sunday afternoon, 
some four miles from the Seminary. This plan of use- 
fulness to others prevailed greatly amongst the students, 
and was very advantageous also to themselves. At one 
period of my Princeton course, I belonged to a committee 



80 



MY LIFE ANB TIMES. 



of students who were conveyed every Sunday morning 
down to the city of Trenton, some ten or twelve miles be- 
low Princeton, where we had a Sunday-school among the 
convicts in the State's prison. This was another oppor- 
» tunity of usefulness to others and not less to ourselves. 
While we were thus engaged, the Asiatic cholera visited 
the United States. There were a number of cases in the 
New Jersey State's Prison. Our Sunday-school teachers, 
nevertheless, kept up the school. We frequently had oc- 
casion to sit by the bedside of the sick and dying, giving 
them religious instruction and comfort, 

All these my early friends at Princeton, I believe, have 
passed over the river before me ; I think I have survived 
them all. But I have not yet named the man — and he, 
too, has already passed over — who more affected my fu- 
ture life than all these others put together. This was my 
class-mate, William M. Thomson, a Northwestern Pres- 
byterian, a man of rough exterior, but he wielded a pol- 
ished pen, had plenty of brains and became a distin- 
guished missionary for a half century amongst the Arabs 
in Syria. He was the author of The Land and the Booh 
and other very valuable works. 

Thomson said to me one afternoon, "Adger, let us 
walk down to the river and take a bath." As we were re- 
turning together, he asked if I had ever thought of becom- 
ing a foreign missionary. I replied that we were in such 
great need of more ministers at the South that it had 
never entered my mind to consider that subject. We 
talked over the subject as we walked back, and, repairing 
to my room together, we continued our conference till 
bed-time. The subject thus casually brought, to my at- 
tention, took an immediate and very strong hold upon me. 
I saw at once that great as might be the need of more min- 
isters in my own State every heathen nation was incom- 
parably more destitute. The deep interest thus excited 
never left me for a day until after years of careful and 
prayerful consideration I was led to offer my services to 
the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- 
sions. They consisted of Congregationalists and Presby- 
terians together. At that period our church had no sep- 
arate organization for foreign work. A society had just 



THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY LIFE. 



81 



arisen somewhere in Pennsylvania, named the Western 
Foreign Missionary Society, which in after years came to 
represent the whole Presbyterian body. But at the time 
of my engagement with the Boston Board I knew little or 
nothing of it. 

I found out after some time that my friend Thomson 
belonged to a secret association of Princeton men, all 
specially interested in foreign missions, who made it their 
business to bring that subject to the attention of indi- 
viduals in their respective classes. They were thus a body 
of propagandists. None of those whom they approached 
suspected that they had been selected to be operated on. 
Still later I found out that within this informal associa- 
tion there was another more formal and more secret one, 
consisting only of those who had made up their mind to 
embark in the work. Thus there was a wheel within a 
wheel, and both of them worked efficiently. Old Dr. 
Alexander, several times, met with us in this inside organ- 
ization, and we got from him a great deal of useful in- 
struction and advice. We also had a " Society of Inquiry 
on Missions," which held public meetings, and different 
committees read reports about the various heathen lands. 

I entered the Seminary September, 1829, and con- 
tinued a member of it until the close of the Seminary 
year, 1833, when I was licensed by New Brunswick Pres- 
bytery. But we had a vacation of three or four weeks in 
the spring. In the spring of 1831 I visited my home in 
Charleston, and there, in the good providence of God, I 
first saw my future wife, Miss Elizabeth Keith Shrews- 
bury. I was returning from a prayer-meeting with my 
mother and sister Margaret. At the corner of Mary and 
King streets my sister observed the above named young 
lady, with whom she had recently become very intimately 
acquainted, on the other side of King street, engaged in 
the duty of tract distribution. She called to her to come 
over. It required some little urging to get her consent, 
but she came. My sister said to me, "Now you shall see 
blushes," and I saw them. I was introduced to her, and 
with me it was love at first sight. My sister persuaded 
her to go up home with us to take tea, and then accom- 
pany us to another religious service. I walked with the 



82 MY LIFE AjSTD TIMES. 

blooming stranger, and my first impressions were deep- 
ened. I visited her several times, and every Sunday took 
pains to slip into the infant school-room, where she taught 
some fifty little pupils. I stood at the door behind her 
back, and was charmed with her methods of interesting 
and instructing those little ones. My sister very soon 
charged me with being fascinated. I told her I certainly 
was, "and now," said I, "as you sympathize strongly with 
me in being attracted to a foreign missionary life, you 
must see if, when I return to the Seminary, you cannot 
interest your friend's mind in the same subject, and, as 
you are occasionally exchanging notes with one another, 
you must sometimes send me one of her notes for my in- 
spection." The following spring I returned again to 
Charleston, and after two or three interviews with the 
lady who on my previous visit had so deeply interested 
me, my mind was made up, that she was the one I wished 
to marry. But I did not then immediately propose to 
her. 

While my thoughts were thus absorbed with the great 
subject of the foreign propagation of the Christian faith, 
and while I was very seriously engaged in making prepa- 
rations, if providentially permitted to take part in that 
work, the State of South Carolina, but especially the city 
of Charleston, was agitated to its very centre with the 
question of nullification. This agitation, if I am well in- 
formed, began in 1824, when Judge William Smith, the 
old leader of the Crawford party in South Carolina, 
offered in the Legislature at Columbia certain anti-bank, 
anti-internal improvement and anti-tariff resolutions. 
My father was a great admirer of Mr. Crawford, and also 
of Judge William Smith. Judge Smith in those days 
was Mr. Calhoun's stiff State Eights opponent, at whom 
this whole original movement was aimed. Judge Smith 
triumphed for the time, obtained the party predomi- 
nance in the State, and was sent back, as he desired, to 
his seat in the United States Senate. But logic was not 
the Judge's fort, as it was Mr. Calhoun's. The South 
Carolina resolutions of Judge Smith were levelled against 
the general government usurpations, as he thought them, 
but his abler opponent educed from his adversary's own 



THEOLOGICAL SEMIXABY LIFE. 



-3 



principles a remedy he had not thought of, and which was 
to end in a direct conflict between the Federal and State 
authorities. The discussions which for six years had been 
agitating the State in 1831 culminated, and the urgent 
issue was whether it was expedient to interpose the sov- 
ereign power of South Carolina to prevent the execution 
of the tariff laws. There were great and noble men in 
lead of both sides. The conflict enlisted every person, 
great and small, male and female. My father belonged to 
the party which claimed the name of the Union and State 
Eights party. Like multitudes of other very busy men, 
he turned aside largely from his daily occupations to the 
great question which was convulsing our State. He was 
very desirous to have me attend some of the public meet- 
ings, but my mind was too much preoccupied with still 
greater questions. Yet. one morning I was terrified when 
I heard him relate what had happened the previous night. 
Each party was having a large gathering of its followers. 
It was evident that a bloody encounter would ensue should 
the opposing crowds happen to meet upon the dissolution 
of their assemblies. That eminent citizen, Joel E. Poin- 
sett, was just at that time the leader of the Union party 
in Charleston. At the close of their meeting, and when 
his crowd were about to go forth in the expectation of a 
fearful rencounter with their opponents that night, alt. 
Poinsett, taking out a key from his pocket, opened a door 
leading from the hall where they were assembled into an 
adjoining apartment, which was in fact a spacious closet. 
He had had a large supply of clubs stored up there for 
just this very occasion, and he invited every one of his fol- 
lowers to help himself to a club. Thus armed they issued 
forth, and, behold ! as they marched along, there were 
seen on the other side of one of our streets the many hun- 
dreds who belonged to the other party. Each party 
marched and counter-marched on each side of the street, 
and one party certainly, and the other party probably, 
were both prepared for a bloody encounter. There was 
jeering on both sides, but the leaders, a kind providence 
watching over our city, managed to prevent their fol- 
lowers from coming to a contest in the middle of the 
street. I listened with trembling thankfulness to this 



84 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



narrative. Lofty and grand is patriotic sentiment, when 
it is sincere, Daice et decorum est pro patria mori. But 
alas ! that every true man can be so easily and so power- 
fully roused about his country's welfare, and yet Chris- 
tian men are generally so indifferent to the grandest en- 
terprise that ever stirred the human heart — the enterprise 
of proclaiming to the whole of this ruined world the 
glorious gospel of salvation. 

As intimated above, my sister Margaret, who had 
shortly before that period, renounced the world and de- 
voted herself to her Lord, had become very much inter- 
ested in the subject of foreign missions, so much so that 
she fully intended entering on that work with me. When 
addressed subsequently by her future husband, she had 
objected that her intention was to go on the foreign work 
with her brother John, he instantly replied, "There will 
be no difficulty on that point." He added he would 
gladly go along with us, that before crossing the Atlantic 
he had offered his services to the London Missionary So- 
ciety, but it was considered that his constitution was 
inadequate to such a life. He became and continued for 
forty years pastor of the Second Presbyterian church. If 
the South Carolina Synod has been ever since about 1833 
peculiarly alive in some degree (but, oh! how small that 
degree) to the claims of the foreign mission work, I here 
record what will be generally acknowledged by those who 
know best, that this has been due, through Almighty 
grace, in very large measure, to the missionary zeal of 
Dr. Thomas Smyth. My sister Susan also became very 
early interested in the idea of going on a mission, but 
her constitution forbade the carrying out of such an idea, 
and, as afterwards plainly appeared, her true vocation 
was to stay by her parents, and especially to take care of 
her father in his extreme old age. As to my loving 
mother, she never betrayed to me the slightest unwilling- 
ness to consent to what I was proposing ; she was far too 
devoted a Christian to do that. But how was it going 
to be with my father ? The most delicate and difficult 
duty of my life had been for me to address him privately 
and personally on the subject of his soul's salvation; and 
he had listened to me kindly and heard patiently all I 



THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY LIFE. 



85 



had to say ; and he had subsequently, and, I feel sure, in 
all sincerity, made a public profession of his faith in 
Christ. But here now was another delicate and difficult 
subject for me to bring before his mind, and what would 
he say about it ? He must have been aware of my being 
interested in the general subject. I had never consulted 
him respecting my entering the ministry and going to 
Princeton to prepare for it, because from my early child- 
hood it was always predicted by my godly old grand- 
mother that I was to be a minister, and that seemed to be 
always taken for granted by my father. But to go as a 
missionary to some foreign country, never to return home 
(for three-score years ago that was always understood to 
be the foreign missionary's lot, and no idea of a furlough 
to return for a year was ever thought of), this, I say, was 
a very different question from entering the ministry for 
service in this country. How, therefore, was my father 
going to receive what I had to say on this subject ? I was 
led to introduce the subject to him in connection with 
asking his consent to my engaging myself to the young 
lady I was in love with. He had seen her frequently at 
his house with his daughter Margaret ; she had been in- 
troduced to him, of course, but he was a very busy man, 
and his personal acquaintance with her was really very 
slight. I told him of my attachment to her and my wish 
respecting her, enlarging considerably, of course, as I 
went on upon my high estimate of her character and 
merits. I saw the characteristic, merry twinkle in his 
eye, as he replied to me, "Oh! there remain always as 
good fish in the sea as ever were caught.' 7 I remarked 
that "a fisherman always angles for the kind of fish that 
he prefers to have." When I told him that I felt much 
impressed with the idea that I ought to devote my life to 
the foreign service of the church, and that it was not 
every young lady that would be willing to go, or that 
would be qualified to go with me, he at once became very 
serious, expressing his high opinion of Miss Shrews- 
bury's character, but saying that he thought it would be 
wiser to postpone the decision of my own future course of 
life, and also of my engagement to her. He said that he 
would prefer my finishing my studies at Princeton, and 



86 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



then going to Germany for some years, that I might pros- 
ecute them there. Oh ! that father of mine ! How kindly 
his feelings always were towards me and what lofty ex- 
pectations he always cherished regarding my career. It 
often pains me to think how much I disappointed him. 
It pains me even now, and perhaps even more than it ever 
did, as I look back upon all these things through the long- 
vista of many years. I had not at that time committed 
myself either to Miss Shrewsbury or to any person on the 
subject of my becoming a foreign missionary. But the 
feeling of duty within me was very strong, and amounted 
very nearly, though not altogether to a decisive conviction. 
I saw very plainly that the generous proposals of my 
father would completely revolutionize all my inward 
tendencies. I felt no special aspirations after eminent 
scholarship. I saw and felt that the whole world, as the 
Apostle John said, lieth in wickedness ; that there ought 
to be many, while there were but few, volunteers for for- 
eign service ; that, while I might be needed at the South, 
there was incomparably greater need in heathen lands ; 
that there was no particular obstacle, as with some others, 
in the way of my entering on this work; and all these 
views having long and deeply impressed themselves on 
my heart, I could not easily dismiss them. I do not re- 
member in what terms I responded to my noble father's 
gracious proposition, but I hope I properly expressed my 
sense of his goodness to me. But I recollect telling him, 
as we closed the conversation, that I understood him as 
having no positive objection to my making the engage- 
ment I had in view, in case I should finally conclude on 
that step. Many years have passed and memory has not 
recorded distinctly what the words of his answer were, 
but I felt sure that he did not mean to oppose, and it was 
not long before the engagement was made. I returned to 
Princeton, and spent one year more there. In the mean- 
time, I had offered my services to the American Board, 
and was accepted, and not long afterwards was appointed 
a missionary to the Armenians. I spent the winter of 
1833 and spring of 1834 in visiting the Presbyterian 
churches of our synod, and presenting the claims of the 
foreign mission work upon them. 



OUR ^lAEEIAGE &NT> SAIIUXG FOE SMYRNA. 87 

Some of my grandchildren, when reading the account 
I have just given, may he inclined to wonder that I did 
not confer with my father when I first began to consider 
seriously the question of foreign work. The Apostle 
Paul's example shows that there are some questions 
where we may not confer with flesh and blood. ]\Iy father 
at that initial period was not a professing Christian, and 
the question with me was a question of conscience. More- 
over, both my father and my mother, whilst holding 
firmly in their hands the reins of parental authority, and, 
whilst we all looked up to them with profound reverence, 
and whilst my father especially had never laid the weight 
of one finger upon any one of his children, because one 
word from him was absolute law ; still they had, both of 
them, always encouraged us in regard to some matters to 
think for ourselves. And then I had been sent far away 
to college in the State of New York for three years, and 
was afterwards far away again in New Jersey at the Sem- 
inary for four years, so that I had been trained as it were 
to rely on the resources of my own judgment. In my own 
case, as a father, I pursued a somewhat similar course. 
Whilst endeavoring to instruct my children as to all that 
was right or wrong, I never tried to have them become 
mere machines. I encouraged in each of them freedom of 
thought and, to a proper extent, freedom of action. 

Becoming naturally much better acquainted with his 
future daughter-in-law after our engagement, my father 
came to be extremely fond of her, and, in fact, before very 
long, began to treat her as one of his own daughters. We 
were married on the 29th day of June, 1834. The time 
drew nigh for my ordination, and in the Second Presby- 
terian church I was solemnly set apart by the Charleston 
Union Presbytery to the work of foreign missions. An 
immense audience gathered to witness the laying on of 
the Presbytery's hands. Before setting out I wrote and 
published a farewell letter to my friends throughout the 
State, giving them my reasons for the step I was taking. 
It was a day of weeping when my wife and I parted from 
her relatives and mine. My father accompanied us to 
New York and Boston. So did my brother James. The 
little brig that was to carry us to Smyrna was not quite 



88 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



ready to sail. We had also some purchases for our outfit 
to make in Boston. Having no occupation whilst we were 
making our purchases, the time hung heavy on my 
father's hands. I saw that he was much distressed at the 
prospect of separation, and at last I begged him to leave 
us. He started home early the next morning by stage. 
I went down with him and saw him in the stage, and my 
brother James subsequently informed me that, as they 
started off, my father laid his hands on the back of the 
seat before him, and bowed his head upon his hands and 
wept audibly and profusely. As for me, that was the 
bitterest hour of my life — up to that period. I had left 
my mother with my father to take care of her ; but the 
thought that oppressed me was, who was I leaving behind 
me to take care of my father ? 

The ancestors of my wife were English. Two brothers 
by the name of Stone came to this country very long ago 
from Bermuda. One of these brothers married a Miss 
Leycraft, who was my wife's great-grandmother, and 
their daughter, Miss Elizabeth Stone, for whom my wife 
was named, married John Conyers, who died in 1799. 
Their daughter married Edward Shrewsbury, and they 
were the parents of my wife. John Conyers and his wife, 
and also Edward Shrewsbury and his wife, lie in the 
Archdale Street church-yard, Charleston, S. C. 

As to the ancestry of my wife's father, Edward Shrews- 
bury, that also was pure English. Dr. Joseph Johnson, 
in his valuable volume, says two wealthy young English- 
men named Shrewsbury came to this country with one 
sister before the Revolutionary war. Edward, one of 
these two brothers, was a Royalist. He had a right to be 
loyal to his king and his own country. Stephen, the other 
brother, was an equally earnest Whig, and bore arms in 
the Revolutionary war. Their sister was married to Jere- 
miah Dickinson. These two brothers, Stephen being the 
older, carried on, after the Revolutionary war, the busi- 
ness of ship-building on Shrewsbury's Wharf, afterwards 
known as Union Wharves. In an old list of members of 
the Charleston Fellowship Society, Stephen Shrewsbury's 
name is recorded in 1770 or thereafter. He had three 
sons, Stephen, Edward and Jeremiah. Stephen Shrews- 



MY WIFE'S ANCESTRY. 



89 



bury, Jr.'s, name is found on the list of members of the 
Fellowship Society in 1790 or thereafter. The posterity 
of Jeremiah Shrewsbury are still living in Alabama. 
Edward Shrewsbury had five children — Elizabeth Keith 
(my wife), Anne Hollinshed, John Stoney, Edward and 
Maria. Stephen Shrewsbury, Jr., married his cousin, 
Miss Dickinson. Two daughters were born to him — 
Louisa and Caroline ; Louisa, afterwards Mrs. Dr. Moul- 
trie, and Caroline, who married her cousin, Jeremiah 
Dickinson. Stephen Shrewsbury left a considerable for- 
tune to his two daughters, but in case they died without 
children it was to go to the families of his two brothers, 
Edward and Jeremiah. Stephen died in 1815, and in 
1882 the property at last came to my wife and her 
brothers and sisters, and to their Alabama cousins. I 
will hereafter give a much more full account of this 
matter. 

My wife's mother was a member of the Circular 
church, Charleston. Her father was for many years one 
of a ship-building firm, when Charleston carried on that 
kind of business. The firm was Pritchard and Shrews- 
bury. But their business declined with the decline of 
ship-building in the old city. My wife's father died of 
paralysis in his old age. He never made a public pro- 
fession of religion, but I have in my possession a long 
and very touching letter written to my wife, which bears 
very ample evidence that for some time before his death 
he was a very humble believer in our Lord and Saviour. 



CHAPTEK V. 



Life Among the Armenians. 
1834-1846. 

THE brig Padang sailed from Boston, Massachusetts, 
on her voyage to Smyrna, Asia Minor, on the 2d 
day of August, 1834. She carried seven missionary pas- 
sengers — the Rev. Mr. Merrick, missionary to the Per- 
sians; Rev. Samuel R. Houston and wife, missionaries 
to Greece ; Rev. Lorenzo Pease and wife, missionaries to 
the Island of Cyprus, and myself and wife, missionaries 
to the Armenians. Mr. Merrick was originally from 
New England, and studied theology at Columbia Semi- 
nary. Mr. Pease was from Xew England, and was a 
Congregationalist. Mr. Houston was from Virginia, a 
Presbyterian, and got his theological education at Union 
Seminary, Virginia, and partly at Princeton. 

The Padang had very poor accommodations for so 
many passengers, on such a long voyage. But it was hard 
to find a vessel setting out from Boston to Smyrna for a 
cargo of figs that could furnish any better. It had only 
one small cabin of four berths, with two small state-rooms 
attached. Mr. Merrick was given, of course, the main 
cabin for his accommodation. There was, therefore, 
necessary for the third married couple a small state-room 
cut off from the hold of the vessel. It allowed room for a 
double bed, with just additional space enough for one 
chair. But it was not high enough for a person to stand 
in it upright. Of the two original state-rooms, one was 
considerably better than the other, the second one being 
really very much contracted in its dimensions. We three 
young men had to determine how these three apartments 
were to be distributed amongst us and our wives. We 
were all very polite and unselfish, and each one of us, of 
course, declined the best state-room in favor of the other 
two. Dr. Wisner, Secretary of the Board, had charge of 
our debarkation, and overheard our talk on this subject. 



LIFE AMOXG THE AE:\IEXIAXS. 



91 



"Now," said he, "my young brethren, this will not do at 
all. Yon are none of yon sea-sick yet, but when yon see 
yonr wives begin to suffer from this malady, this present 
generosity of feeling will all vanish. Yon mnst draw lots, 
and so let the matter be determined providentially for 
each one of yon." We drew lots, and Houston got the 
best room, Pease second best, and my poor wife and I got 
the worst one. She was desperately sea-sick nearly the 
whole sixty-four days' passage, and sometimes I was 
afraid that her strength would not hold out to reach 
Smyrna. 

Upon our arrival there, the Rev. Daniel Temple, the 
American Board's missionary to the Greeks there, with 
Mr. Homan Halleck in charge of their printing office, 
came on board to welcome us. But there came also the 
Rev. Josiah Brewer, not of that Board, and I accepted his 
invitation to go to his house, while the others found ac- 
commodations with Mr. Temple and Mr. Halleck. We 
found Mrs. Brewer a very charming lady, and she and 
my wife immediately became very close friends, and the 
friendship continued for years until Mr. Brewer and his 
family removed to America. Mrs. Brewer was the 
daughter of an old Congregationalist minister at Lenox, 
Massachusetts. Her brother, David Dudley Field, was 
an eminent lawyer in New York, and another of her 
brothers is Judge of the Supreme Court of the United 
States. Her little son, David Josiah, whom I knew in 
Smyrna as a little fellow with a big head, I encountered 
in 1890, while on my way to Kansas City, in the mag- 
nificent person of the Hon. David J. Brewer, of the 
Supreme Court in the United States, and chairman of 
the committee appointed by President Cleveland to in- 
vestigate the territorial questions between Venezuela and 
Great Britain. I happened to sit near him, and was 
attracted by his fine countenance and grand bodily 
presence. Finding out the name of this remarkable per- 
sonage, I introduced myself to him, and then introduced 
him to my wife and daughter Susan, the latter born, like 
himself, in Smyrna, to whom he expressed the pleasure 
he had in meeting one of his fellow-citizens. 

I had been sent out as a missionary to the Armenians, 



92 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



the Kev. William Goodell and the Eev. H. G. 0. 
Dwight having preceded me as the first missionaries to 
that people, and the Rev. Cyrus Hamlin having followed 
me as the fourth one. But who are the Armenians ? The 
Armenians are undoubtedly descended from Japhet, the 
second son of Noah. On no account can they be consid- 
ered either a Semitic or a Hamitic race. Their physiog- 
nomy distinguishes them from the children of Shem, and 
their color from those of Ham. The Rev. Frederick 
Davis Greene, author of the Armenian Crisis in Turkey, 
a very competent authority, says, "Their manners and 
customs, as well as their religious beliefs in heathenism, 
were similar to those of the Assyrians and Chaldeans, of 
the Medes and Persians, and still later of the Parthians." 
But it is their ancient language, among the very most an- 
cient of the whole world, which most distinctly points 
them out as the sons of Japhet. Scholars have frequently 
asserted its affinity with the Indo-Germanic tongues. I can 
affirm from a somewhat intimate acquaintance with the 
Armenian, both ancient and modern, that it has a very dis- 
tinct relation to the Latin language in the construction of 
its verbs, as well as in the termination of that large class of 
its nouns which end in tio. Yet no person hearing the 
Armenian spoken could possibly imagine that there was 
the least resemblance to the Latin in either of these re- 
spects or any other. Certainly the rough and harsh 
guttural sounds of the Armenian language would utterly 
forbid his entertaining such a thought. This feature of 
the language is not at all due to its being, as commonly 
now spoken by the people, so much mixed with Turkish 
words, because the Turkish language deals comparatively 
in smooth sounds. 

The Armenians trace their history to the very remotest 
antiquity. Their original country is referred to in Gen- 
esis as Ararat, the mountain where Noah's ark rested 
after the flood. In 2 Kings xix. the parricidal sons of 
Sennacherib are said to have fled to Armenia. Ezekiel 
also speaks of Tyre being furnished with horses and mules 
from the land of Togarmah, and the tradition of the Ar- 
menians, as I have myself heard it stated by the highly 
educated amongst them, derives their descent, as well as 



LIFE AMONG THE ARMENIANS. 



93 



their name, from this same Togarmah, a son of Gomer, 
one of the patriarchs of the Japhetic line. 

Armenia was included in the conquests of Alexander 
the Great, and afterwards submitted to the rule of Syria. 
In 190 B. C, when Antiochus the Great was defeated by 
Scipio, Armenia gave refuge to the exiled Hannibal. 
Armenia lying between the Persian and the Roman Em- 
pires, was continually preyed on by both, and the Roman 
historian, Tacitus, says that her people "were almost 
always at war ; with the Romans through hatred, and 
with the Parthians through jealousy." Under Theodo- 
sius the Great, 390 A. D., Armenia was divided between 
the Romans and Persians. Subsequently it was divided 
between the Greek Empire and the Saracens. But in 
1045 the whole eastern frontier was laid open to the 
Seljouk Turks. In 1071 A. D. the whole of Asia Minor 
lay at the mercy of the Seljouks. At the close of the 
fourteenth century Timour the Tartar devastated the 
whole of Armenia. In 1605 Shah Abbas, of Persia, 
transplanted twelve thousand Armenian families to 
Ispahan. 

The history of the Armenian church dates back to the 
commencement of the third century. As early as the time 
of Tertullian, who lived about 201 A. D., there were 
flourishing communities of Christians in Armenia, who, 
towards the close of the century, endured much persecu- 
tion from the Persian fire-worshippers. But in 302 
Gregory Loosavoritch, i. e., "The Enlightener," became 
the apostle of the Armenians, and converted the whole 
nation. But before this time Christianity had largely 
degenerated. The simple preaching of the gospel, and a 
purely spiritual worship had given place to the practice 
of external rites and ceremonies, and to discussions about 
the refinements of theological speculation. Gregory him- 
self partook largely of the monastic spirit of his time, 
and it was more than one hundred years after this before 
Mesrob invented their alphabet, and, with Isaac, his 
teacher, translated the Scriptures into their language, 
and this ancient version still exists, standing very high 
in the esteem of all scholars. 

But three-score years ago the Armenian people gen- 



94 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



erally were unable to read this translation of the Scrip- 
tures. Accordingly, there prevailed an almost universal 
ignorance of the fundamental truths of the gospel. The 
evangelical doctrine of faith was unknown. Faith was 
with them a receiving of whatever the church teaches. Of 
justifying faith they had hardly even heard. They were 
taught to confess the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, 
but they knew little of the sanctifying power and grace of 
the Holy Spirit. "What must I do to be saved V was to 
them an unnecessary question, since all baptized persons 
are saved already. And so their whole knowledge of 
Christ was to learn when and how to make the sign of the 
cross, when and how to fast, what church feast days to 
observe, how often to confess, and when to receive the con- 
secrated wafer from the priest's hands. 

The Armenians have a regular hierarchy, consisting 
of nine distinct orders, its head being the Catholicos of 
Etchmiadzin in the Caucasus. The business of the priest- 
hood is not to instruct the people, but, to a large degree, 
to perform certain ceremonies, which had, however, in- 
herently a power to save the soul. The original idea of 
the Christian ministry is totally lost. Priesthood has 
taken its place; sacrificing and sanctifying have driven 
out preaching. Well-nigh absolute are the powers of this 
priesthood. Baptism is essential to salvation, and yet 
baptism belongs to the priest. He transubstantiates the 
wafer into the body, soul and divinity of Christ. The 
people must both eat and worship this wafer ; and so an- 
other essential to salvation is also in the priest's hands. 
Confession to the priest is another essential. Thus they 
keep the conscience of the people. From time to time 
they probe the wounds made by their sins and must re- 
main masters of all their secrets. They also pronounce 
the pardon of the sinner. Finally, they hold the terrific 
power of excommunication. Under this sentence a man 
is not spoken to by any one, none buy at his shop. None 
dare sell or give him food. His spirit, when he dies, is 
shut out from the kingdom of heaven, and his body is 
denied Christian burial. Nay, more, it never consumes 
in any grave, but is possessed of an evil spirit, which 
causes the accursed excommunicant to wander about at 
night and allows him no rest. 



LIFE AMONG THE AEMENIANS. 



95 



The Catholicos at Etchmiadzin is, as I have said, the 
ecclesiastical head of all the Armenians. Bnt the Arme- 
nian subjects of the Sultan are represented at his court 
by an officer called the Armenian Patriarch. This is al- 
ways a bishop, who pays a large sum into the Sultan's 
treasury for his official position and political and ecclesi- 
astical power. He sells bishoprics to reimburse himself 
with a large profit. Bishops must sell priesthoods to re- 
imburse themselves with a profit, and the priests must 
reimburse themselves by charges on the people for their 
priestly functions. Great is the power of the Armenian 
ecclesiastics. But perhaps the real lords paramount 
among these people are the rich Armenians of Constanti- 
nople, who are the bankers of the Sultan and all his 
pashas, and therefore able to make their power felt 
through all the empire. 

Such was the condition of the Armenian people and of 
their ecclesiastical and political affairs sixty or seventy 
years ago. The reader who desires to know what progress 
has been made amongst them during this period, by the 
blessing of God, from the labors of American missionaries 
and other good influences, may turn to Appendix A of this 
volume, where is presented a trustworthy, yet remarkable, 
statement. 

In the year 1894 the Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid per- 
petrated a massacre of the Sassoun villages of Armenians 
below the city of Moosh, in ancient Armenia, at which 
the civilized world was made to stand aghast. That was 
one of a series of such barbarous acts of cruelty and op- 
pression towards a subject race as history has seldom 
recorded. In Appendix B of this volume the reader will 
find some account of these atrocities. 

Considered as men, the Armenians are a sober, temper- 
ate, thoughtful, industrious, patient, persevering race. 
Of a genius decidedly commercial and manifesting every- 
where a growing spirit of patriotism, they bear a stronger 
resemblance to the Anglo-Saxons than any other Oriental 
people. They are not void of courage, and have well 
learned fortitude in their long school of suffering. They 
have little taste for either music or poetry. They are not 
so light-minded, imaginative or versatile as the Greek; 



96 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



less dull and sluggish than the Turks ; less degraded and 
wretched than the remnant of Israel, that other peeled 
and downtrodden people. Like the Jews, they are also a 
scattered race. Very numerous in ancient times, the 
desolating wars of long ages in the past and the cruel 
massacres they have been suffering in recent times have 
greatly reduced their numbers, so that their population 
cannot now exceed four million. It is computed that 
2,500,000 are under the Sultan, 1,200,000 in Kussia, 
150,000 in Persia. Westward they have proceeded to 
Trieste, Venice, Vienna and Amsterdam, and probably 
there are not less than seven thousand in New York. Nu- 
merous in Constantinople, and also all through Asia 
Minor, especially in its central portion, they are also to 
be found in Syria, and, in fact, they are dispersed 
throughout the continent of Asia from Constantinople to 
Calcutta, and as far eastward as Batavia, in Java. It is 
this fact of their wide dispersion that constitutes the im- 
portance of the Armenians as a field for evangelical Chris- 
tian labor. The gospel in its purity and power accepted 
by this race, scattered among so many nations, would 
constitute a leaven that should strongly aid in leavening 
all Asia. 

Having thus elaborately answered the question, Who 
are the Armenians ? I proceed to speak of Messrs. Goodell 
and Dwight, my predecessors in the Armenian work. 
They were stationed at Constantinople, and their work 
was amongst the many thousands of Armenians in that 
great city. Before their arrival, there had begun to be 
manifested in Constantinople a spirit of earnest, religious 
inquiry amongst some young men of the Armenian people. 
The Bev. William Groodell, stationed at Constantinople 
before Mr. Dwight came, had a more general commission, 
but could communicate with the Armenians through his 
knowledge of Turkish, with which all the Armenians are 
familiar. Two young men, Hohannes and Senekerim 
by name, had called on him, desirous to learn Protestant 
doctrines. As soon as Mr. Dwight came and was able to 
speak the Armenian language they became his disciples, 
and brought him others of like spirit. He had a room in 
a khan, in one of the bazaars, and usually spent his days 



LIFE AMONG THE ARMENIANS. 



97 



there conversing with all who came with their inquiries 
to hear the gospel from him. 

My first business was to learn the Armenian language, 
and my wife and I began the study of it together under 
the instruction of a young Armenian of Smyrna, who 
proved an incompetent teacher, and I soon obtained a 
really efficient instructor. He was a character. He had 
lived all over the Eastern world, and knew his own lan- 
guage well, besides some others. He gloried in the title 
of "Yussef Effendo," that is, "Joseph my lord." He 
gave us a g-ood start in the language, had a good head on 
his shoulders, and keen, bright eyes, but his person was 
very disagreeable, it was the abode of no less than three 
different kinds of inhabitants. My wife had to be very 
careful, every time he took his departure, to sweep all 
around the hard bottom chair on which he sat, as well as 
the chair itself. After awhile Mr. Dwight sent to me 
Baron Sarkis, that is, Mr. Sarkis, one of the evangelical 
Armenians, who had begun to multiply around him. 
This young man was a gentleman and a scholar, and also, 
we had good reason to believe, a truly enlightened Chris- 
tian. He lived in my family, and he taught me Arme- 
nian while I taught him English. We soon began the 
work of translating, in which we continued to labor 
together until, after several years, I saw him pass over 
Jordan, a bright and joyous believer. He died of con- 
sumption. His physician, of English descent, but born 
in Turkey, very skillful and eminent in his profession, 
practised the. Oriental habit of cheering up the very sick 
with false hopes. Contrary to the doctor's wishes and 
prophecies of evil, I plainly told Sarkis what was his true 
condition, as the doctor had made it known to me. The 
next time I met him, his report of the patient was de- 
cidedly favorable. "Dr. Wood," said I, "you told me it 
would be fatal to Sarkis if I should plainly inform him 
that his days were numbered, and now you confess to me 
yourself that he is better." Dear Armenian brother, the 
doctor's kindly, but untrue, assurances were almost daily 
contradicted by his own experiences, and so he was kept 
painfully moving up and down on a sliding scale of the 
doctor's own invention. The correct information, which 



98 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



I communicated very gently, but very plainly, brought 
bis soul into a condition of steadfast, confident, hopeful 
quietude. He had no fear of death. Many were the 
pleasant talks we had together about our future home in 
the Father's house on high. Among the books we had 
translated together into his own language was the Pil- 
grim's Progress. How his countenance did light up when 
I said to him, "Sarkis, you are going to meet old John 
Bunyan ! " So, when I reminded him that he would see 
Paul and Peter and John, and, above all, that he would 
meet, face to face, his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the 
dying believer's eyes plainly expressed the joy that filled 
his soul. 

My friend Sarkis Hohanissean, that is, the son of 
John, was such an Armenian scholar as was quite rare 
amongst his nation in Constantinople. He became also 
a thorough English scholar. I could set hardly anything 
in our own tongue before him of a construction too diffi- 
cult for him to transfer, in plain and simple words, to 
his own language. His only fault as a translator for the 
Armenians was a tendency to the use of a somewhat too 
scholarly style. The popular language of the Armenians 
was very much corrupted by being mixed with Turkish 
words, and these Sarkis, like every other intelligent 
Armenian, abhorred. They were so many badges of his 
people's ignorance and servitude to the Moslem. That 
the vocabulary of the modern Armenian should widen, as 
well as become purified, if education was to make any 
progress amongst the people, was just such a necessity as 
had been felt amongst the Greeks, when their modern 
language, narrowed down to slender limits by centuries of 
barbaric ignorance, had begun to open and spread itself in 
the expression of knowledge and thoughts and ideas long 
buried amongst them. It has not required quite a century 
to bring back modern Greek, among the educated of that 
nation, to full equality, perhaps, with the language of 
their forefathers, when Greece was "in its glory's prime.' 7 
The same prospect lay before the Armenian people. 
Their language must have words dug out from the disuse 
of centuries under whose ruins they were lying buried, 
because they had need of those words to express the new 



LIFE AMONG THE ARMENIANS. 



99 



ideas they were beginning to entertain. Sarkis knew 
this, so did all the few intelligent scholars that remained 
amongst them. So did the Armenian missionaries, and 
therefore we were tolerant, of some degree, of that eleva- 
tion of his style, which the scholarly taste of Sarkis conld 
not help indulging. 

But, as our work advanced, I found it necessary to ob- 
tain another translator from Constantinople. His name 
was Baron Arisdages. But his surname also my memory 
cannot recall. He, too, was a very fine Armenian scholar, 
not in all respects, however, equal to Sarkis. He some- 
what lacked the finished culture of his comrade, though 
he was very competent. With Baron Arisdages I began 
the work of translating, first, the ancient Armenian New 
Testament into the modern language. The Armenians of 
Asia Minor had never seen the E"ew Testament in a lan- 
guage they could well understand, except that a few 
copies had found their way amongst them of a translation 
that was made in the East Indies under Baptist mission- 
ary auspices into the modern Armenian dialect, as spoken 
in that region, differing considerably from the form of 
dialect used further west. 

The ancient Armenian ISTew Testament was translated 
A. D. 410-431. Its reputation, amongst the ancient ver- 
sions, stands very high, being second only to the old 
Peshito, or Syriac, version. Its originator seems to have 
been the Patriarch Isaac, but the chief executor of the 
work was that eminent scholar, Mesrob, and two assist- 
ants, whom he sent to Egypt to acquire thorough Greek 
scholarship. I can testify from my own knowledge of the 
version that it has one remarkable feature of similarity 
to our received Greek text, namely, the order in which 
every word occurs. I was often led to remark how com- 
pletely the Greek idiom was followed in its collocation of 
words. Our translation from this ancient version into 
modern Armenian was made by my helpers, Sarkis and 
Arisdages. As they proceeded, I was reading our Greek 
text, and occasionally appending a note, where the old 
Armenian seemed to differ from the Greek. This trans- 
lation, after many years, was revised, and, no doubt, im- 
proved, by my eminent colleague, the Rev. Elias Biggs, 



100 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



aided by the best native scholarship. Some twenty-five 
years ago Dr. Cyrus Hanilin, visiting me at Columbia 
Seminary, said that there had then been as many as three 
hundred thousand copies of this modern Armenian New 
Testament circulated among the Armenians all over the 
continent of Asia. The Armenian people, like the .Jews, 
are a scattered race, from Constantinople to Calcutta. 
They are to be found all over the greater Asia, including 
Persia, Tartary and India, in little groups of here a few 
families, and there a few more. The whole Armenian 
population cannot be much more than four millions, but. 
permeating, as they do, the whole Asiatic population, if 
they can once be evangelized, the gospel leaven will leaven 
the whole mass. It is this that constitutes the supreme 
importance of Armenian missions. 

Upon the death of Sarkis, who had been my helper in 
conducting a monthly magazine of useful knowledge, 
largely evangelical, and in translating various other pub- 
lications, such as the Assembly's Shorter Catechism, and 
various religious tracts, relating to gospel doctrine, 
adapted to popular reading, I had been obliged to get a 
third translator from Constantinople. His name was 
Muggerdich Tomasean, that is, "Baptist, the son of 
Thomas." Arisdages did not live in my family, for some 
reason which I cannot recall, though he was a stranger in 
Smyrna, and had no family. But Baptist, the son of 
Thomas, had a room at my house and ate at my table. He 
was a good Armenian scholar, and learned the English 
language speedily, but he had the literary acquirements 
of neither Sarkis nor Arisdages. His style of writing 
in Armenian was better suited to the popular apprehen- 
sion. He was an earnest Christian believer, and had a 
burning zeal for the religious enlightenment of his peo- 
ple. With his help we published, amongst other things 
of the kind, a translation of a simple evangelical cate- 
chism, which Dr. C. C. Jones had published, and used 
very profitably amongst the negroes of Liberty county. 
Ga. Baptist Tomasean had no sooner seen this book, and 
learned to read a few pages of it, than he became very 
urgent for its preparation to be used amongst his people. 
We did not translate it literally, but largely, as Dr. Jones 



LIFE AMONG THE AEMENIAXS. 



101 



had written it. We made it the basis of a popular cate- 
chism of Scripture doctrine. It was a great success. It 
was exceedingly popular among the Armenian brethren, 
and many copies of it were called for, and, I feel sure, 
were very useful. It proved to be exactly adapted to the 
existing condition of religious ignorance amongst even 
intelligent Armenians. 

(A. .£>.) Since I wrote these words I have found, 
amongst my old letters, one from Dr. Riggs, dated Con- 
stantinople, September 29, 1860, from which I make an 
extract, which has a peculiar significance at the present 
date, November 13, 1896, when Turkish and Kurdish 
atrocities are arresting the eye of the civilized world: 
"We trust that the reformation, in which we have been 
permitted to bear a part, is preparing the country gradu- 
ally for the political changes which may be in store for it. 
x\To civil government can make a people happy without the 
fear of God, and no misgovernment can make them en- 
tirely wretched where that blessed element exists. When 
fifteen hundred or sixteen hundred assemble (as they do) 
weekly in the Sabbath-schools of both Aintab and Marash, 
to study the Bible and Jones' Catechism, it is impossible 
that the communities around them should remain sta- 
tionary. There is essential progress, though it is far 
from being all that we could desire." 

This reference to work, in the execution of which, 
fourteen years previously, I had borne a part, was exceed- 
ingly cheering to me. Dr. Riggs' statement makes it 
evident that thirty-six years ago there were in Marash 
and Aintab, cities far in the interior of Asia Minor, 
fifteen hundred or sixteen hundred of the population of 
each city, gathering together every Lord's clay to study 
the Scriptures and Jones' Catechism, originally prepared 
for the slaves of Liberty county. How much these more 
than three thousand believers must, with the blessing of 
God, have increased during these thirty-six years, and 
what a great work of preparation must have been thus 
effected for a patient endurance of the fearful calamities, 
which the Sultan's misrule and the indifference of 
European governments, were to bring upon the poor Ar- 
menians ! 



102 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



The spirit of religious inquiry was rapidly spreading, 
especially amongst the Constantinople Armenians. Some 
of the better educated Armenians, who were opposed to 
the pure truths of the gospel which we were disseminat- 
ing, began a counter work of publication for their people. 
They issued attacks upon our teachings in the form of re- 
ligious pamphlets, and the brethren in Constantinople 
prepared replies, sometimes translated in Constantinople, 
but more frequently by us at Smyrna. The printing was 
done at our press. Thus I came into the necessary em- 
ployment of another helper, one ^luggerdich Papasean, 
that is, '"Baptist, the son of Papas,'' a young man of 
Smyrna, educated in their language by his older brother, 
Andreas Varjabed, the head professor, as his title signi- 
fies, of the Armenian College in Smyrna. Andreas Var- 
jabed was himself a thoroughly educated Armenian 
scholar. His young brother, Baptist, soon became a truly 
enlightened Christian believer, and a very earnest co- 
worker in spreading the truth throughout his nation. 
Shortly after my return to America from Smyrna, this 
young man died of consumption. The other Baptist, 
AEuggerdich Tomasean, had previously departed this life, 
and the decease of both, I do not doubt, was their entrance 
into a higher sphere of service for their Lord. 

It had begun to be manifest that, through the blessing 
of God. there was commencing among the Armenians, 
though, of course, on a very small scale, a work very 
much like the Eeformation of the sixteenth century. 
There were the same antecedent conditions ; a nation 
that had been nominally Christian for long ages, but who 
were perhaps totally ignorant of gospel truth; they had 
no legible Scriptures — they were generally as incapable 
of reading the word of God in their own ancient language 
as they were of reading the Hebrew or Greek Scriptures ; 
the Christianity they knew was a religion of mere cere- 
monies ; it was, in fact, a religion of idolatry, for, while 
eschewing the worship of graven images, they bowed 
down and worshipped before pictured likenesses ; it was 
in. simple truth !\Eariolatry. for their trust was in the 
Virgin, and Christ was altogether hidden behind his 
mother ; the Armenian priesthood closely resembled that 



LIFE AMOjS'G- THE AEMEXIAKS. 



103 



of the Roman Church when Luther arose; and, finally, 
there had come to prevail the same spirit of religious in- 
quiry, and of dissatisfaction with their church. This 
was especially true at Constantinople, but it seemed to 
prevail, in some degree, very widely. I should have 
added that the Armenian patriarch, bishops and priests 
had begun to manifest the same persecuting spirit which 
inspired the Romish clergy three centuries ago. Accord- 
ingly, it was felt to be desirable that the Armenian priest- 
hood, and also the Armenian inquirers, should be made 
acquainted with the history of the Lutheran Reformation. 
The. man whom I named, in a previous page, as head of 
the Armenian Academy, or College, at Smyrna, that is, 
Professor Andrew Papasean, was a good French scholar, 
and I also was familiar with that language. Accord- 
ingly, we began the translation of D'Aubigne's History of 
the Reformation. I took a copy of the edition put forth 
at Paris and Geneva in 1838, and carefully abridged it 
in such a manner as to shorten much the history without 
much injury to its value. Professor Andrew translated 
the abridgment into Armenian, and then, together, we 
carefully went over the Armenian and French, consider- 
ing both the abridging and the translating work. It con- 
stituted two respectable volumes in the modern Armenian 
language. This was almost the last work of my twelve 
years of labor among this people, for shortly after this 
was finished, I had to return home to the United States. 
Dr. Hamlin, when visiting me at Columbia Seminary, as 
mentioned before, said that the work had proved accepta- 
ble and useful. 

My chief business, as missionary to the Armenians, 
being the management of the press in modern Armenian, 
as has already been made to appear, I was consequently 
very much confined to my desk, revising the work of my 
translators, and reading proof sheets, as they came from 
the printing office. Accordingly,. I had little time to visit 
amongst the Armenians of Smyrna. They were indeed 
but a few thousands, and whenever any man of their 
nation ventured to visit me, he was immediately marked. 
Nevertheless, as soon as I was able to speak the language 
fluently, I always attempted a Sunday service in Ar- 



104 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



menian. Usually I had one or two Armenians, besides 
my three or four translators, to hear me expound the 
Scriptures. Occasionally I would have several strangers. 
Quite seldom did my little congregation amount to eight 
or ten, but one Sunday I actually had a large congrega- 
tion which numbered sixteen ! 

We always had preaching in English at the Dutch 
Chapel, where a considerable congregation of the English, 
French Protestant, and Dutch colony would assemble. 
The summer time I usually moved my family out of the 
city four miles to the little Turkish village of Boujah, 
where a number of Europeans and Americans congre- 
gated, and to them I constantly preached on the Lord's 
day, and also of a Wednesdav evening. Some sivmmers 
we went to Bournabat, which was seven miles from the 
city near the gulf shore. Eive miles of the seven we had 
to be rowed in a little Greek caique; the other two we 
rode on donkeys. From Boujah I would ride in to my 
daily work on horseback, or perhaps on the back of a don- 
key. It was on donkeys that our ladies usually rode with 
the owner of the animal running by her side with one 
hand on the bridle, and the other hand behind the cum- 
brous big Turkish saddle, holding a sharp goad, with 
several rings attached to the goad. Sometimes he would 
stimulate the donkey with the goad, though frequently it 
was enough just to jingle his rings. Those patient little 
beasts of burden were very quick in their motions, and 
would whirl round very suddenly, thus unseating even a 
male rider. The native women always rode astride; 
but our ladies, having only the Turkish saddle to sit on, 
found it necessary to have the driver at their side helping 
them to keep on. 

We had arrived in Smyrna early in October, 1834. On 
the first day of the following June our first child was 
born. We named him after my father. He died on the 
15th day of April, 1837. Our second son was born on 
the 2d of June, 1836, and we named him after two of my 
brothers. He died on the 4th of June, 1837. Thus in 
seven weeks both were taken, and we were left childless. 
These dispensations we felt to be very severe, but they 
did certainly afterwards yield to us the peaceable fruits 



EIEE A^IOXG- THE AEAIE^'IAK'S. 



105 



of righteousness. As to myself, religion became a new 
experience to me, awakening within me far deeper and 
tenderer emotions than it ever before produced. As at 
Princeton Seminary, I received, as it were, a new con- 
version, so was it here and now. When my first-born died 
I was overwhelmed with grief, but my aged colleague, 
the Rev. Daniel Temple, perceiving my distress, told me 
I should probably live to consider this the greatest bless- 
ing of my life. His words were fulfilled. When the 
second boy died we were totally unprepared for it. I 
was sitting in the basement room of our little Turkish 
cottage at Boujah, on Saturday, June 3d, writing a ser- 
mon on the text "God is Love," which I was to preach 
next day to the little English and American congregation. 
I little thought that in the "Love of God 1 ' we were about 
to experience another painful bereavement. But, in his 
good and wise providence, it was so ordered. At mid- 
night our only remaining child was taken from us. . . . 
I added a little to my sermon, and on Sunday morning 
I was enabled to preach it. There was no Protestant 
church building then at Boujah, but a suitable lot had 
been purchased, and a chapel was about to be erected. In 
that lot we buried our infants in one grave alongside of 
the one where we had shortly before assisted in depositing 
the remains of the wife of the Rev. Eli Smith, missionary 
to Beirut. ~No Christian church building can be built in 
Turkey without a special permit from the Sultan at Con- 
stantinople. Every effort to obtain this permission failed 
in this case. After a delay of some months, the Protes- 
tants purchased a dwelling house that had lately been 
erected, which, with some inside alterations, would con- 
stitute a very commodious chapel. To this the Turks 
would make no objection. That lot being enclosed, and 
graves being dug there for our purposes, Mr. Smith and I 
repaired at midnight, took up our dead, and they were 
buried in their new resting-places. Subsequently, I had 
a tombstone put over my children, with our names and 
theirs inscribed, and also their ages, and then this 
epitaph — 

" Asleep in Jesus ! 
To Avake with all that glorious band, 
The martyrs of this solemn land." 



106 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



I took this couplet of lines from a very sweet poem 
which Miss Hamilton, of Scotland, who had become 
greatly attached to our little James during his sickness, 
had written respecting him. It was published in Scot- 
land with her poems, and a beautiful copy of them sent 
to me, but Tecumseh Sherman burnt it, with the rest of 
my library in Columbia. 

Our first-born son, J ames, was baptized by Rev. Daniel 
Temple, on the afternoon of a Lord's day in the Dutch 
Chapel at Smyrna, 1835, and his brother, Robert William, 
was baptized by the Rev. Josiah Brewer on Friday even- 
ing, 1st of July, 1836. Mrs. Eli Smith, of whom I 
spoke above, had spent the last days of her suffering life 
with us in our little Turkish cottage. She was a Miss 
Landman, of Connecticut, a highly gifted lady; had 
passed some years of her life in Beirut, Syria ; was fa- 
tally ill with consumption, and, with her husband, was 
on her way home to die there ; on the way from Beirut 
to Smyrna they were cast away, the vessel was wrecked, 
and there being no way of departure from the desert spot 
where the shipwreck occurred, Mrs. Smith had to lie ex- 
posed on the beach more than one day and night. Reach- 
ing Smyrna at last, she was brought from the city to us at 
Boujah, where she died, in the same little chamber where 
our James had passed away, and her husband being 
called out at the moment for some reason, it was my 
privilege to close her eyes in death. This is no unfair 
sample of missionary life. 

There were two somewhat remarkable features in the 
death of this eminent missionary woman. After con- 
sciousness had ceased a good while, her dying moans, all 
at once, gave way to what seemed to be the march of a 
hymn tune in two lines, though, of course, there were no 
articulate words. We looked at one another, and whis- 
pered, "She is singing." "Yes," said her weeping hus- 
band, "she hears the heavenly choirs, and is trying to sing 
in unison with what she hears." This certainly was quite 
impressive. Then it was a somewhat remarkable assem- 
bly who witnessed this scene. Besides the Americans 
present, there were several Armenians, one or two Greeks, 
one English lady, and one man of the Druses of Mt. 



LIFE AMONG- THE ARMENIANS. 



107 



Lebanon — a mongrel Mohammedan and heathen people. 
He had come as a servant with Mr. and Mrs. Smith. 

Our third child, named Sarah Anne, after my mother 
and my wife's sister, was born at Smyrna, September 4, 
1837, and was baptized by the Rev. Eli Smith. The next 
summer, my father and mother, with my sisters, Susan 
and Jane Anne, and my brother William, were all in Eng- 
land, and in July we started with our babe, ten months 
old, and Yanoula, that is, Joanna, a Greek girl, her nurse, 
to go, at my father's expense, and meet them there. I had 
taken the precaution weeks beforehand to ride out seven 
miles from Smyrna to Sevtheekeoy, a little Greek village, 
to get the consent of Yanoula' s mother for her to go with 
us. She had been the nurse of our first two boys, as well 
as little Sarah Anne. With one exception she was the 
only Greek we had personally known who never would 
tell a lie. We were greatly attached to her, of course, and 
so she was to us. Her old mother cheerfully consented. 
Nevertheless, on the day of our embarkation, as a measure 
of needful prudence, I took my family as early as possible 
on board the French steamer on which we were to sail. 
Leaving them there, I went on shore to wind up some 
little matters of business, and amongst them to see the 
American Consul, Mr. David Offley, and get my pass- 
ports. I found quite a tumult in the city. The Greek 
priest at Sevtheekeoy had heard that we were taking Ya- 
noula to England. He inferred that she was to be made 
an English, or an American, or a Protestant girl, these 
three terms being synonymous with him. He raised a 
storm about the old woman's ears, brought her into 
Smyrna to take the girl away from us. Reaching the 
city, he stirred up the Smyrna priesthood, and they 
stirred up quite a crowd of their people, so there was a 
great commotion. Even the American Consul, partly of 
Greek blood himself, and no friend to us missionaries, 
took part in the fuss, and remonstrated with me against 
my transporting this Greek girl to America. I assured 
the gentleman that I was not going to America, and that 
the girl should be brought back safely in three or four 
months. So then I took a caique, and went on board the 
ship. I found that Yanoula's mother, and perhaps her 



108 



MY LIFE A^TD TIMES. 



priest, but certainly a number of her excited people, had 
gone out to the French vessel to bring the girl back. They 
wanted to go on board for her, but only the mother was 
permitted to ascend. Then followed a scene. The old 
mother interviewed her daughter, commanding, persuad- 
ing, beseeching her to go back with her. To all this Ya- 
noula was deaf. Finally, the old mother solemnly pro- 
nounced a curse on her daughter, as she took her depar- 
ture. Yanoula stood firm to the end, all that she said 
throughout the whole affair was, "You told the chelebi 
and the kokona" that is, the master and the mistress, "that 
I might go with them, and now here at the last I am not 
going to disappoint them." 

Such is the power which the priests wield over the 
ignorant people. Yanoula knew very well that her 
mother's curse was not denounced sincerely — she only 
spoke it from fear of the priest. 

Poor little Sarah Anne had not altogether recovered 
from her attack of the measles. She became quite sick on 
the voyage. At that period all passengers from the Le- 
vant desiring to enter Europe must perform a quarantine 
of three weeks at the island of Malta. Accordingly, we 
were shut up in one of the old stone forts built by the 
Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, viz., the Castle of St. 
Angelo. It was a splendid fortress, kept in the very best 
order, but without any armament. We had delightful 
apartments all built of solid masonry. We were fur- 
nished with whatever we desired from a restaurant kept 
outside of the fort, sat in our cool, shady room during 
the heat of every day, and walked at our pleasure on the 
ramparts at eventide. Our sole companions were a young 
English gentleman, named Hardy, and his friend, whose 
name I forget. Our imprisonment was not very disagree- 
able, except for the sickness of our little girl, who seemed, 
day by day, to grow gradually more feeble. 

Having obtained what they call pratique, that is, our 
quarantine being over, and being released from the Castle 
St. Angelo, we proceeded on our way to Marseilles. The 
baby did not improve ; nevertheless, when we reached 
France, we judged it best to proceed. We got as far as 
Avignon, in a French diligence. There I was able to 



LIFE AMOXG THE AKMEXIANS. 



109 



find a carriage that had come from Paris, and was to be 
sent back. I engaged it at once, and we then set out 
"travelling post," that is to say, we took advantage of 
the Trench system of Posies, obtaining fresh relays of 
horses continually. In this way we travelled night and 
day, and made rapid progress. Passing a rope from one 
corner of the carriage above our heads, to the opposite 
corner diagonally and back again, and putting a couple 
of sticks, a foot and a half long between the ropes, and 
then passing a folded sheet round the ropes thus separ- 
ated, we constructed a pretty comfortable hammock for 
the sick baby, on which she lay quietly just as long as the 
carriage moved on. At Lyons, both the child and her 
mother being very sick, we were delayed two or three 
days at the Hotel Provencial. I called in a French physi- 
cian, by name Pernolet. He was a Roman Catholic. Our 
case as Americans, and as missionaries coming from 
Smyrna, the mother and the babe both sick, seemed to 
interest him very much. I managed to converse with 
him in my broken French, and I was greatly moved by all 
his kindness to us. Moving on at length from Lyons, we 
were placed, first, in a small steamer crowded with pas- 
sengers, which conveyed us to a larger one, on board of 
which we then embarked. The crowd, as soon as they 
embarked, rushed for the breakfast table, and filled it. 
We, moving slower, had to wait till they had finished. 
Then they turned to see us sitting there with our sick babe 
on its mother's lap. Evidently their commiseration was 
excited. It was not long before a French priest ap- 
proached me, and, supposing the child to be dying, asked 
me if I would like him to baptize it. I replied that I was 
a Protestant minister myself, and the child had been bap- 
tized. He bowed politely and retired. I felt quite sad, 
and was sitting behind my wife, with my hand covering 
my eyes, when, after a short interval, he returned, carry- 
ing oil, or perhaps water, in a little cup behind his back, 
and then unperceived by me, as he passed by the mother 
and the child, he just made the sign of the cross on its 
forehead, and moved quickly off. My poor wife was very 
indignant, but I told her he meant kindly, believing, as 
his church teaches, that unbaptized children are all lost 



110 MY LIFE AND TIMES. 

forever, that our babe was not truly baptized, and that 
by this act of his, this stolen baptism, he had actually 
saved the baby's soul ! 

After awhile I made the acquaintance of a gentleman 
and his wife who spoke English. They proved to be 
Protestant travelling missionaries employed by their 
brethren to go about amongst the Roman Catholic people, 
giving them instruction in the true faith. We had a good 
deal of conversation, and I told him about the stolen bap- 
tism. Subsequently, the zealous priest got this gentleman 
to introduce him to me, and after a few common-place 
words, he politely requested my name and address, saying 
it would be a pleasant souvenir to him. Of course, I gave 
it to him, and he pencilled it on his little memorandum 
book. I have no doubt that our little Sarah Anne, the 
child of a Protestant minister, was in due time reported 
to the proper authorities as having been properly baptized 
by him, amongst all the other little children whose salva- 
tion he had thus been the means of securing. 

We quit the steamer in the afternoon at Chalons, and 
pursued our sorrowful journey towards Paris. We 
passed through Autun, and when we drove into the hotel 
yard at Auxerre, I was greatly astonished and much de- 
lighted to meet there my venerable father. Hearing that 
we were on the road with a sick child, a perfect stranger 
in France, and knowing nothing of the language, he had 
still, in his fatherly kindness, ventured to set out to meet 
us far in the interior. At the very commencement of his 
lonely journey, he had happened to sit alongside of an old 
Frenchman, and the kind old lady his wife. They per- 
ceived he was a stranger, and took charge of him. There 
were frequent changes to be made in the mode of the 
journey, and at every one of these his conductors, with 
the politeness characteristic of the French, would see to 
it that he got a good place. The old lady, especially, 
would beckon to him with her hand, saying something to 
him in French, and he, following her, would say, "Oui, 
oui," which was all the French he knew, and then all 
three of them would have a laugh together. 

Our chartered carriage was in need of some slight re- 
pairs at Auxerre, and the workman made rather an ex- 



LIFE AMOXCr THE AEMENIANS. 



Ill 



tortionate charge. Xot an adept in speaking French my- 
self, I was hardly able to deal with him in his language. 
I had learned in Turkey at what a disadvantage this al- 
ways puts a disputant. Whenever a Turkish porter, who 
had carried a load for me on his pack, undertook to charge 
me more than was due, I always began to use the English 
language on him, and he was generally quite discomfited 
at once, and would give up the argument, and depart with 
a just payment in his hand. I was inwardly amused 
when I saw my father try this plan with the French black- 
smith. Shaking his doubled-up fist at the man, the old 
gentleman, considerably roused by his injustice, broke 
out thus, "If ever I catch you in my country, I will do 
you this same way." Nevertheless, he paid the bill, and 
we departed. Reaching Paris, he took us to the Hotel 
Meurice in the Hue de Rivoli. From Paris we went to 
Havre, and took steam to England, and then by rail to 
Birmingham. There again, after some weeks, we were 
left childless, September 9, 1838. Our little one, enclosed 
in a coffin filled with gypsum, and then placed in another 
box, was sent across the Atlantic, and buried in my 
father's family plat in the Second church grave-yard, 
Charleston. We all went down to Liverpool, and were 
lodged with our friends, John Bones and lady, at the Star 
and Garter Hotel. My brother James, having just ar- 
rived from his travels in Egypt, my father took him and 
me over to his native country. We went to Dublin, and 
then Belfast, went through the County Antrim, visited 
Dunean, where my grandfather lived and was buried, 
also Moneynick and Randallstown, and thence to the 
Giants' Causeway, and after that, back again to Liver- 
pool. 

When the time came for my brother William to leave 
the party and return home, we called a cab, after the clock 
had struck seven in the morning, and putting his trunk 
into it, my brother James and I set off with the cab for 
the quay, my father putting a shilling into my hand to 
pay the cabman. He, with my brother William, were to 
walk down together, having to call somewhere on the way. 
Arrived at Scotland yard and the dock, we would have 
sent William's trunk on board, but the cabman would not 



112 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



give it up, demanding an extra shilling, on the ground 
that he was called before seven. I quietly said, "Wait 
till the gentleman who engaged you comes down, and then 
we'll settle it." There was quite a crowd of spectators. 
When the others got down, I told my father what the 
cabman said, and that he wouldn't give up the trunk. The 
Irish blood in the old man rose at once, starting forward 
through the crowd, he said, "Where is the fellow ?" My 
brother James saw the storm arising, and felt it was time 
for him to interfere. With his strong, muscular arms, he 
laid hold on poor, little Paddy, and sent him flying some 
ten feet away from the trunk. The hot Irish blood cooled 
off the instant James laid hold, and father cried out, 
"James, let the man alone." I stepped out of the crowd, 
and beckoned to a policeman up at the office, who came 
down at once, and, hearing what we said, took the cabman 
under arrest to the office, where he said we could find him 
when ready. William and his trunk went on board, and 
the ship departed. The policeman named an hour when 
a magistrate would be present, and we could have satisfac- 
tion for the cabman's misconduct. My father's Irish 
heart had softened as soon as he saw the big, burly Eng- 
lish policeman leading off his little countryman a pris- 
oner, and so no sooner had the policeman made his state- 
ment than the Irish hand found its way to a pocket, and, 
slipping several shillings into Paddy's hand, he told the 
policeman he would enter no complaint, and the cabman 
went away rejoicing. 

The day approached when the Charleston party were 
to set sail. It had been settled that my wife's state of 
health required that she should accompany them. I felt 
it was necessary that I should return to my work in 
Smyrna. My father had taken a great fancy to our 
Greek nurse, and urged Yanoula to go with her mistress 
to Charleston. Probably she would have been willing, but 
I had said that she would return from England. It was 
a sorrowful parting for my wife and me. They sailed 
away, and I set out alone for my Eastern home. No, my 
brother James accompanied me as far as Paris, and from 
thence I had the charge of good, faithful Yanoula, all the 
way from Paris to Marseilles in a diligence, and thence 



LIFE AMOXG THE ARATEXIAXS. 



113 



on a ten days' voyage by French steamer to Smyrna. 
They had promised me at the diligence office that we had 
plenty of time to catch the next steamer, but it was with 
no little consternation, that, on reaching the highlands 
above AEarseilles, I could see the French steamer setting 
out on her voyage. I was condemned to a ten days' so- 
journ in a French hotel at AEarseilles, with this young 
woman on my hands. I found that she needed my pro- 
tection constantly. I had to interfere on her behalf in 
the hotel. On the steamer, likewise, the same thing oc- 
curred, she being in the second cabin, and I in the first. 
During my ten days' stay at the hotel, I had to provide 
her a room next to my own, and also to have my food fur- 
nished three times a day in my own room, with one table 
set for myself and another for her. When she got home at 
Sevtheekeoy, she had a hard time ; she was never to be 
allowed to hire to an American or English family again. 
I never saw her but once more, but she carried with her in 
her separation from her mistress and me all the instruc- 
tions my wife had given her, and also the modern Greek 
Testament she had taught her to read. 

After some fifteen months, the separation becoming no 
longer tolerable, we met again in Liverpool in January 
or February, 1810, my wife bringing with her ATiss 
ACaria Shrewsbury, and our third little son, about one 
year old. They sailed direct from Charleston. John B. 
Adger, Jr., was born in Charleston February 7, 1839, 
and was baptized at Boujah bv the Bev. Elias Biggs June 
18, 1840. 

To meet them I had taken the French steamer at 
Smyrna, passed another quarantine alone in the Castle of 
St. Angelo, reading AlcCrie's Life of John Knox and 
other histories of the Beformation. Again landing at 
AEarseilles, I travelled post, in company with three young 
Scotchmen returning home from India on furlough, and 
then from Havre to Liverpool. 

Stopping awhile in London, my family and I took an 
English steamer back to Smyrna. Arriving there in 
April we went to Boujah for the summer. I rode in every 
day, and worked with my translators till evening. One 
dav in August, 1S10, mv donkev fell with me, and fell on 



114 MY LIFE AND TIMES. 

me, hurting my right knee. My physician insisted on as 
much rest for the knee as was possible, and I had to blister 
it, first on one side and then on the other, for the eight 
following months, and did not go at all to Smyrna, but my 
manuscripts and proof sheets were sent to me daily at 
Boujah. In my house I used a crutch ; when I had occa- 
sion to go about Boujah I rode on a donkey. One Wed- 
nesday evening after preaching as usual to English and 
American residents there, I rode up to the house of a 
dying English friend, Mr. Samuel Barker, for one of my 
accustomed visits to him. His brother, Mr. Benjamin 
Barker, was agent of the British and Foreign Bible So- 
ciety, and kept a depot in the city, of their books. The 
Barker family consisted of several sisters, and one more 
brother, Mr. Henry Barker. They were of English de- 
scent, but their forefathers were old residents of Smyrna. 
Mrs. Samuel Barker was of the French Protestant family 
of La Fontaines. She was an eminent Christian woman, 
full of faith, and devoted to prayer for her sick husband. 
He had been ill for months of consumption. She had beg- 
ged me to break to him gently, but very plainly, what was 
his true condition, for, like most consumptives, he was by 
no means aware of it. I had complied with her request, 
and did, gently, but very plainly, make him understand 
that he was a dying man. He received my communica- 
tions very kindly, but evidently did not believe what I 
said. He then turned the tables on me, and being some 
twenty years my senior, began to give me, very kindly, 
but very decidedly, his opinion as to the great impro- 
priety of a young minister speaking so plainly to a sick 
man about his own death. My visit on that Occasion did 
not seem to have made the desired impression on his 
mind, but his faithful Christian wife was at that very 
time, and always wrestling with God in prayers for her 
husband, not so much that he would give him life, as that 
he would give him "length of days forevermore." I 
visited him repeatedly. He was a man of excellent moral 
character, universally respected in Smyrna, but he was 
utterly ignorant of the gospel, although baptized in the 
English Church, and a regular attendant at its services 
in the chapel of the British Consulate at Smyrna. He 



LIFE AMONG- THE ARMENIANS. 



115 



had heard sermons there by good chaplains, and had 
piously joined in repeating the responses through all the 
beautiful prayers of the English Church, ever since he 
was a boy, but he had never learned that he was a sinner, 
who could be saved only through grace. When I talked 
with him of our transgressions, which could only be 
washed away by the blood of Jesus, he heard me as one 
speaking to him in an unknown tongue. When I talked 
to him of being born again, he received it just like Nico- 
demus, with, "How can these things be ?" The idea being 
presented to him that we could not be saved of ourselves, 
but only through another, and that none of our good deeds 
or good words could be accepted by God except through 
the Mediator, he protested that he had never heard such 
incredible things as I was stating. When I said to him, 
"Why, Mr. Barker, don't you close every prayer with 
the words, Tor Jesus Christ's sake V or with others just 
like these ?" he would answer, "Oh ! yes, I know that, but 
that is only a form of words that we are taught to use." 
Notwithstanding all this dense ignorance, I would remem- 
ber how earnestly his wife was pleading for him, and I 
could not but hope and believe that the Spirit of God was 
applying the truth to his heart. 

At the Wednesday evening lecture mentioned above, I 
had expounded Colossians, first chapter, from twelfth 
verse to twenty-second inclusive. When I got to Mr. 
Barker's sick room, I took the same passage of Scripture, 
reading and explaining it to him. Two or three of his 
sisters stood at his bedside, no one of them probably 
knowing any more of the gospel than he did. His wife 
was not present. I think I knew well where she was, and 
what she was doing at the time. I called Mr. Barker's 
attention to the necessity of our being made meet for the 
inheritance of the saints in light, and of our being deliv- 
ered from the power of darkness, and translated into the 
kingdom of God's dear Son ; and how Jesus had made 
peace for us by the blood of his cross, and how those who 
were alienated from him by wicked works, and enemies 
in their mind to him, he does now reconcile in the body 
of his flesh through death in order to present them holy 
and unblameable and unreprovable in the very sight of 



116 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



God. When I had explained these things, I heard a voice 
from the dying man's pillow, crying out, "Mr. Adger, is 
that what you say I must believe in order to be saved V 9 
I replied, "Yes, Mr. Barker, that is it," and I then re- 
peated several other passages in quick succession where 
the same precious, saving truth is set forth. "Well, then," 
said Mr. Barker, "if that is what I must believe, I do be- 
lieve it." His wife's prayers had been answered. It was 
as if I had thrown a rope to a drowning man, and he had 
seized it, and I had seen him seize it, and been rescued. 
Mr. Barker lived about three weeks. Hitherto he had 
been naturally a man of very few words. His tongue 
had now been loosed ; his native taciturnity was all gone. 
I may say, literally, that he spent all his remaining life, 
henceforth, telling the good old story of the gospel to all 
that came about him. Alas ! they certainly did not all 
understand what he said, else one of his sisters had never 
said what was reported to me, viz., "'When I am dying I 
want some one to come and tell me what Mr. Adger told 
my brother, for it made him die so happily." 

January 1, 1841, our second daughter and fifth child 
was born at Boujah, and was named after her mother, 
Elizabeth Keith. She was baptized at Boujah by Kev. 
Henry Van Lennep. 

In April, 1841, our translation of the Xew Testament, 
from the ancient version into the modern Armenian lan- 
guage, having been completed at Smyrna, I took it with 
me to Constantinople, that I might carefully revise it, 
with the aid of some of the best native Armenian talent 
that I could command there. The annual meeting of our 
mission, when all the missionaries assembled at the cap- 
ital, was to be held the following month. Expecting to 
be detained there the whole summer with my revision, 
my family accompanied me to the annual meeting. I was 
still using my crutch when I walked, and my knee was 
still feeling, to some degree, the effects of my fall. I 
walked up to see Dr. Dawson, an eminent English surgeon 
and physician, sent by the British government to show the 
Sultan how to establish a good hospital. He advised me 
to lay aside my crutch, and, leaving it in the entry at his 
boarding house, I walked immediately perhaps a mile, 



EIEE AXOXG THE ARMENIANS 



117 



and had no more trouble with my knee. The annual 
meeting was held very soon after that. Onr babe took the 
varioloid from the children of Mr. Johnson, of North 
Carolina, missionary at Trebizond. Mr. Johnson was a 
Presbyterian, a godly man, and very useful missionary, 
both by his preaching to the Armenians, and by some doc- 
trinal tracts for them which we published at Smyrna. 
From little Lizzie her mother took the varioloid, and I 
was her sole nurse. Her case was a serious one, though 
still only varioloid, and she was very much reduced. Mr. 
Dwight, with whom we were lodging, suggested that, on 
account of the extreme heat of the weather, and my wife's 
slow recovery, we should take a little Turkish koolah — 
that is, a miserable cottage, with a little miserable garden 
attached, on one of the hills outside the city — seven miles 
from his house, and remove both our families there. He 
would come in every day to his work at his room in the 
khan previously mentioned. I would go on with my ISTew 
Testament revision, the Armenian reviser joining me 
daily in the garden. In that little Turkish garden, seated 
on a rug on the ground, under a very insufficient little 
shade tree, he and I went on with our work. My wife im- 
proved daily quite fast, drinking every day a glass of 
porter, and breathing the fresh air of the hills. After 
being there about a week, I saw red spots on the back of 
each of my hands, which I attributed to the heat of the 
sun and insufficient shade. This was on Saturday. On 
Sunday Mr. Dwight and I walked in to his Armenian ser- 
vice held at his house. I preached in Armenian to his 
Armenian congregation of about one hundred persons. 
We dined at Mr. Goodell's house, which was nearby. 
About an hour after dinner, I began to feel very faint ; it 
was time to start for the koolah. and I, not being able to 
walk, we went to one of those numerous places in the city 
where men stand with horses ready saddled for hire. We 
mounted, but every mile my illness increased ; still I had 
no suspicion of what was to happen. The next day, Mon- 
day, I lay all day on a bench in the little garden, and an 
old Armenian friend named Oscan, whom we greatly 
valued, came and sat by me for several hours. Evening 
came at last, and brought increased misery to me ; still I 



118 MY LIFE AND TIMES. 

suspected nothing, though suffering all over unspeakably. 
Our bed was on the floor under a window. With the early 
dawn I saw what the matter was, my hand was covered 
with pustules. As soon as possible we procured a Turk- 
ish ox-carriage, and, with my little family, I was slowly 
carried back to Mr. Dwight's house. Next day (Wed- 
nesday) delirium came on, and continued till the second 
Sunday morning, when I was awakened by the cries of 
the hucksters passing along the streets under my windows 
with their vegetables. I had small-pox of the confluent 
kind, over my whole body ; one pustule covered the whole 
back of each hand. I had become a black man. My head 
and neck were dreadfully swollen, and my nostrils stop- 
ped up. Maria Shrewsbury, with my two children, and 
their nurse, were confined to the third story of Mr. 
Dwight's house, and my wife was my nurse. One Greek 
friend, by name "Panayotes," so-called in honor of the 
Virgin Mary, one of whose idolatrous titles is "Panagia," 
which means the All Holy, a most excellent Christian 
brother, who had had the small-pox himself, assisted my 
wife in the care of me. This good man, being an excellent 
Turkish scholar, was aiding Mr. Goodell in translating 
the Bible into Armeno-Turkish — that is, into the Turkish 
language, written with Armenian letters, for the use of 
Armenian readers, who are all familiar with that lan- 
guage. The good and dear Panayotes was one of the only 
two Greeks whom I ever learned to know intimately that 
would not tell a lie, the other one being our baby's nurse, 
the Greek girl Yanoula, spoken of before. Mr. Dwight's 
servant man, an Armenian, by name Hatchadoor (which 
means "Devoted to the Cross") also had had the small- 
pox himself, waited on my wife during our hour of trial. 
There was also a young Scotchman, not very long resident 
in Constantinople, a clerk in some English house of busi- 
ness. He had become a Christian under the influence of 
the missionaries, and was devoted to them. He came, 
and was with us for a day or two when we first got back 
from the koolah, and in the zeal of his first Christian love, 
he was willing to risk his life in waiting on me through 
my illness. Of course, however, this had to be early for- 
bidden. Our physician was Dr. Stamatiades, a Greek 



EIEE AMONG THE ARMENIANS. 



119 



who had studied in America, and a kind, competent and 
faithful young man. But he was desirous of bleeding 
me. Dr. Dawson, the English physician before named, 
had also been requested to come and see me. He did so, 
but strongly condemned the idea of bleeding. He said it 
would be fatal to me. After my delirium passed away I 
began to recover. I was forty days confined to my room. 
In my inexperience, full of ardor in the work committed 
to me, I began with my manuscripts before I was able to 
get out, thus inflicting serious and lasting injury to my 
already impaired sight. When sufficiently recovered, Ave 
went over, under the care of the Rev. Henry Holmes, a 
missionary brother, to Broosa, one of the chief cities of the 
interior, for a visit to the missionaries there. We returned 
to Smyrna about October, 1841. I was able to attend in 
some measure to my work, but was an invalid for eighteen 
months, every day sensibly gaining a little, and so learn- 
ing by experience how many degrees there are between 
extreme illness and perfect health. The winter of 1842 
my dear friend and fellow-missionary, the Rev. Simeon 
Howard Calhoun, one of Nature's noblemen, and a ripe 
and experienced Christian man, boarded in my family in 
the city. He was agent of the American Bible Society in 
the Levant ; afterwards became a missionary of the 
American Board in Syria, but passed over Jordan many 
years ago. I look forward to a meeting with many men 
of God whom I have known and loved in this world, but 
few they are whom I am more desirous of meeting again 
than Simeon Howard Calhoun. That same winter Ave 
entertained, as a guest at our house for several months, a 
most excellent young minister of the Church of England, 
to Avhom both my wife and I became greatly attached. 
He Avas a son of the well-known Csesar Malan, an eminent 
man of God at Geneva, Switzerland. I suppose the ex- 
treme views on some points of doctrine of his venerable 
father had a good deal to do in driving the young man 
into the English Church. He Avas in bad health, and was 
spending the Avinter in our mild climate for that reason. 
He had a Avonderful aptitude for learning languages, and 
I cannot recall how many various tongues of men he had 
become considerably acquainted Avith. He took hold of 



120 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



the modern Armenian with great avidity, and before 
lie left us became quite an adept in that language. He 
must have continued his studies in Armenian after his 
return to England, because in 1868 he published the Life 
and Times of St. Gregory the Illuminator, translated 
from the Armenian. He was very high Church in his 
notions ; and it was instructive as well as amusing to be 
present at the tilts, usually at our dinner table, between 
young Malan, the accomplished scholar and perfect Chris- 
tian gentleman, and my earnest and zealous, but no less 
accomplished and competent Puritan friend and brother, 
Calhoun. These things belong to over fifty years ago. 
Malan and Calhoun, differing so much here, yet loving 
and admiring one another so much in this world, I doubt 
not, are often walking together the golden streets of the 
new Jerusalem, where I hope, ere very long, to walk with 
them. 

Being myself so much of an invalid, and our baby, 
Elizabeth Keith, being very sick that summer, I moved, 
with my family, to Bournabat about March, 1842, my 
proof sheets being daily brought out to me. We chose to 
go to Bournabat instead of Boujah, for variety, and be- 
cause it was pleasant sometimes to get within two miles of 
it by being rowed in a boat. The baby grew very much 
worse as the summer came on. One day, lying on her 
mother's lap, while I anxiously looked at the child, we 
thought we saw her breathe her very last, but she breathed 
once more, and I said, "Let us instantly get donkeys, 
ride to the landing with her, take a caique, and go across 
the gulf to Mr. Cohen's koolah, on the hills outside of 
Smyrna." From the time that we started the child im- 
proved, and on those hills she almost entirely recovered. 
I must tell a little about my friend Cohen. He was what 
is called "a converted Jew," and. as such, had been at- 
tached to the Jewish mission work in Smyrna, under the 
Rev. Mr. Lewis. Whether he was really a converted man 
or not, he had a great many admirable qualities of char- 
acter, and we were devoted friends. His wife, when a 
very little child, escaped somehow the massacre of her 
parents in the Island of Scio. when they, with almost all 
the other Greeks of that beautiful island, were put to 



LIFE AMONG THE ARMENIANS. 



121 



death by the Turks. This child was taken to Smyrna 
and sold as a little Greek slave to some benevolent peo- 
ple ; was sent to Ireland, and there educated in the Eng- 
lish Church, and after returning to Smyrna was married 
to John Cohen. They were an estimable couple, and 
during my fifteen months' solitude in Smyrna, when my 
wife was in America, I had got them to come and live at 
my house for a considerable part of the time when I 
boarded with them. 

Having intimated a doubt as to Mr. Cohen's being 
really a converted Jew, I ought to add that he certainly 
did suffer a great deal of persecution from his own people 
on account of his Christian profession. There were 
twelve young Jews, of whom he was one, that had been 
baptized by clergymen of the Church of England, by 
name Leeves, if my memory serves me, a short time before 
I landed first in Smyrna. They were confined in a Turk- 
ish prison (or perhaps it was a Jewish prison) called the 
Bagnio, and I rather think they had to submit to the bas- 
tinado, that is, to being beaten on the soles of the feet, a 
most cruel punishment, and afterwards they were ban- 
ished to Kaisarieh, the ancient Csesarea, in the centre of 
Asia Minor, about forty days' journey from Constanti- 
nople. Add to this that, of course, they were renounced 
forever by their parents. All these sufferings they hero- 
ically endured for the name of Christ. I knew John 
Cohen intimately, and have often heard him talk of this 
history. I knew one more of the twelve, named John 
Baptist, very slightly, and I recollect nothing particular 
about his career. All the others, as I was well informed, 
subsequently made it manifest, by their lives and conduct, 
that they had not been converted to Christ. One of them, 
at least, became a Turk, and the rest lived disgracefully. 
And so we see it is no positive proof, as is commonly sup- 
posed, that a man is a real believer because he suffers 
much for his Christian profession. He may afterwards 
be led to forswear it. He may seem to begin in the spirit, 
but he may finish, as the Apostle expresses it, in the flesh, 
"having suffered so many things in vain." 

As I have spoken of John Cohen, I must not omit all 
mention of my other friends, the Rev. Mr. Lewis and his 



122 



MY LIFE AST) TIMES 



lady. They were Irish folks from the city of Cork, be- 
longing to the Church of England. I was very intimate 
with Mr. Lewis, as was my wife with Mrs. Lewis, a very 
admirable woman. He came to the East as a missionary 
to the Jews, but was, I think, unsuccessful, and subse- 
quently became British chaplain at Smyrna. Somehow 
he did not get along very well with my New England mis- 
sionary colleagues, but he was a great friend of mine. 

We spent a month or more with the Cohens at their 
koolah. Frequently at night he was visited by Turkish 
soldiers, who were maintaining some kind of guard not 
very far off, and he would get them to perform some of 
their Turkish military dances. We returned in June to 
Bournabat, and we remained there during the mild and 
pleasant winter. Our third daughter, named Anna 
Maria, after her mother's two sisters, was born there, 
March 22, 1S43. She was baptized by my friend, the 
Rev. Simeon Howard Calhoun. My health greatly im- 
proved at Bournabat, and about the month of October we 
returned to the city. The demand for our books was in- 
creasing very greatly, and I was encouraged to push my 
work of translation and publication to my utmost ability. 
All the more because of the long period of my feeble 
health. I was then almost thirty-three years old. But, 
as I look back fifty-three years, I see, and am amazed at 
my want of prudence. But we had a great object set be- 
fore us. It was becoming more and more evident, as I 
have before stated, that, amongst the Armenian people, 
there was beginning a reformation, in very many respects 
just like the great Reformation of the sixteenth century. 
It was on a small scale, of course, but the people in both 
cases were just alike as to their spiritual condition ; they 
were both nominally Christian, but the Bible did not 
exist for either of them in a language which they under- 
stood. In both cases it had to be translated and pub- 
lished. In both cases a few earnest souls had been 
awakened. In both cases the light began to spread, the 
number of inquirers to increase, and more and more we 
were called on for the means of still further instruction 
and advancement. In both cases the ecclesiastical power 
sought to put down inquiry by persecution, and in both 
cases the effect of this was to rouse more of the people to 



LIFE AMONG THE ARMENIANS. 



123 



seek after the truth. Not one man amongst the mission- 
aries but felt a mighty impulse to do his best in these 
exciting circumstances. For myself, I was moved fre- 
quently to continue my work to a late hour at night. I 
remember on one occasion, with poultice on my right eye 
on account of a sty that was troubling me, I found my- 
self at eleven o'clock at night still working with the other 
eye, over Armenian manuscripts, though they are spe- 
cially trying to the sight. 

During the ensuing winter we had a visit from the Rev. 
Dr. Anderson, Secretary of the American Board, who 
was accompanied by the Rev. Dr. Hawes, an eminent 
New England pastor. They came on an official visitation 
to all the missionaries of the Board in Asia Minor and 
Syria. Having finished their inspection of things in 
Asia Minor, they were ready in March, 1844, to set sail 
for Beirut. While sojourning at my house, Dr. Anderson 
had observed that I was overtasking my lately recovered 
strength. He said to me, "You must go with us to Jeru- 
salem." He said to my colleagues, "If Mr. Adger does 
not break off again for awhile, he will be in America in 
about twelve months." My wife accompanied me, and 
we took little Anna Maria and her nurse. We all went by 
steam to Beirut. Thence we were to travel on horseback 
to the Holy City. Our little one and her faithful nurse 
we committed to the care of our kind friend, Mrs. W. M. 
Thompson. Her husband was the man, my class-mate at 
Princeton, who first interested my heart in the foreign 
missionary enterprise. I bought a nice pony horse and 
side-saddle for my wife, and a tall grey steed for myself. 
A Miss Watkins, from Hartford, Conn., joined our party, 
and so the deputation, with Mr. Calhoun and the Rev. 
Eli Smith and Mr. de Forest and his wife, made our cav- 
alcade, in number, nine persons. We had to carry tents 
to lodge in by night, and Mr. Smith took with him Yusief 
Ul Rus Kulla, with his pans and pots, who was to cook 
for the party. However, we had started rather early in 
the spring, and so we had frequent rains on our way down, 
which compelled us to seek lodgings instead of tenting 
at night. Our first day's journey brought us to Sidon, 
where we saw the tomb that is said to be that of the 



124 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



prophet Jonah. Thus far, we had travelled on the coast ; 
we now turned towards the interior, and came to Beth- 
saida and Capernaum at the head of the Sea of Tiberias, 
where there is nothing to be seen except one solitary 
room built of brick, upon entering which we were all at- 
tacked by the inhabiting fleas, and were glad to make 
our escape immediately. The whole country seems to be 
filled with fleas. We spent Sunday at the town of Tibe- 
rias, where the natives say the king of the fleas has his 
capital. It was rather amusing on Monday morning to 
see the two doctors from America trying to pick off hun- 
dreds of them from their blankets. Still Tiberias could 
not help being a city of profoundest interest to us all. 
Here was the water on which the Saviour walked, and 
here was the shore where he first called four of his disci- 
ples, and these Galilean towns were the chief scenes of 
his wondrous words and work. There seemed to be but 
one boat at use on the lake. Our lodgings were at a 
so-called hotel, and we dined and breakfasted as we might 
well suppose, on fish lineally descended from such as the 
apostles caught in their nets. We passed through Cana 
of Galilee on Monday, and spent that night at Nazareth, 
where our Lord was brought up, being entertained by a 
Greek family, friends of Eli Smith. At that house we 
saw in use several of those "water pots of stone, after the 
manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or 
three firkins apiece.' 7 Leaving Nazareth, we passed by 
Mt. Tabor, stopped awhile at the city of Samaria, saw 
the well on which Jesus sat, and the very piece of ground, 
no doubt, which Jacob gave to his son Joseph. There 
could be no doubt about this piece of ground, . because the 
mountains and the plains remain just as they were in our 
Saviour's time. At length we reached Jerusalem. Dr. 
Anderson was anxious to be the first one to enter the city, 
but my horse was better than his, and I denied him that 
honor. Here we found a missionary of the Board, a 
Charlestonian, like myself, Bev. John F. Lanneau, and 
his wife, who was a Miss Gray, from Beech Island. I 
cannot detail all that we saw in and around Jerusalem, 
which made a pleasing, yet solemn impression on the 
heart. There were many things pointed out by the monks 



LIFE AMONG THE ARMENIANS. 



125 



and other natives which we knew to be their mere in- 
ventions. But such things as the Valley of the Kedron, 
and most probably the Garden of Gethsemane, and the 
Mt. of Olives, were there just as nineteen hundred years 
ago. We were in time for the grand show which the 
Greeks and Armenians display on Easter Sunday at the 
so-called tomb of Christ. There is a small enclosed 
building which covers the alleged tomb, and the Greek 
and Armenian bishops open the door and go in there 
alone, and then send holy fire outside through apertures 
in the wall. The Latins, the Greeks and the Armenians 
each have a church building opening in common at this 
tomb, and thousands of people assemble in the galleries, 
which rise one above the other, so that multitudes were 
present to witness the miracle. The Romish Church for 
a long time had disowned this miracle, and accordingly 
their bishop took no part in it. We all stood high up 
among the spectators, looking down sadly upon this 
"Christian" superstition. Each one had a sheet or a 
night dress, or some other article, or even, perhaps, a 
towel or handkerchief, which he desired to have sanctified 
by these holy flames, and he expected to be buried in these 
consecrated articles. And each one held a candle in his 
hand. As soon as the two bishops within the Holy Sep- 
ulchre were ready to thrust out the sacred light, the most 
favored persons that stood by got their candles lighted, 
and then, in much less time than it takes me to write this, 
every candle in these galleries was lighted, and the house 
was filled with a holy smoke. An earnest devotee would 
pass his hand through the flame of his candle and say it 
did not burn. My friend Calhoun, a big, strong man, 
grasped the hand of one such devotee, and made him hold 
it in the flame until he squealed from pain. Eor hours 
before the bishops had entered the tomb, it was sur- 
rounded by a crowd of devotees. But they could not be 
serious for so long a time; consequently one would be 
lifted up and put upon the shoulders of the crowd, and 
thus would go creeping on their heads around the tomb ; 
not seldom offence would be given and taken by some, and 
there would be a little fight, and then one of the Turkish 
guards, placed there by the government to keep order 



126 MY LIFE AND TIMES. 

amongst these Christians, would ply his long korbash, and 
come down with sharp lashes on their unruly shoulders. 

From J erusalem we went down to the Dead Sea, having 
a guard of Turkish soldiers, because that country is still 
infested with robbers. Long before reaching the Dead 
Sea we could see that we were approaching it. The 
country had a horrid look, just as one might expect to see 
it, from the description of the destruction of Sodom and 
Gomorrah by fire from heaven. Thence we visited Jeri- 
cho, and saw the beautiful stream which proceeds from 
the fountain which Elisha healed, and which runs down 
and enters the J ordan just above the Dead Sea. 

Eeturning to Jerusalem, our party divided, Drs. An- 
derson and Hawes, with Mr. Calhoun and Eev. Eli 
Smith, undertook a detour through the Hauran, which 
would occupy more time than I could spare, and more 
fatigue than my strength would admit, not to speak of 
our three ladies, so Dr. and Mrs. de Forest, with Miss 
Watkins and my wife and myself, determined to return 
at once to Beirut. We took a somewhat different 
route on our journey back, passing through the Val- 
ley of Esdraelon, beautifully covered, by the spring 
weather, with wild flowers of various colors from many 
different plants. The whole land looked like one vast 
carpet of red, green and blue hues spread out before us. 
We were able to tent out every night. Our journey being 
more direct and no rain interfering with us, we accom- 
plished it in ten days. We spent one delightful Sunday 
near the ruins of old Tyre at Ras-el-ain, or the head 
fountain. Here there issues from the sand of the shore 
an immense body of spring water, which has been en- 
closed within strong stone walls in the form of an octagon, 
and, as well as my memory serves me, at least ten feet 
high, and sixty or seventy feet in diameter, the water 
passing off through a stone aqueduct into the sea. It is 
a very ancient piece of masonry, and is credited to Hiram, 
king of Tyre, the friend of Solomon. No doubt the water 
comes from the bosom of the mountain, finding its way 
down below the shore, and forced up from amongst the 
rocks there to the surface. The walls enclosing this mag- 
nificent fountain are several feet thick, so that we could 



LIFE AMONG THE ARMENIANS. 



127 



walk all around and view it from above. I have spoken 
of it as one fountain, but not far distant there were two 
others just like this one, only smaller. The day we spent 
there was fine. We pitched our tents amongst the green 
grass, which grew luxuriantly. On the one side of us 
were the mountains of Lebanon, where Hiram's servants 
hewed out the great stones for the temple at Jerusalem, 
and on the other side of us was the sea, upon whose bosom 
he floated down these rocks to Joppa, and thence found 
means, somehow or other, to transport them up to Jeru- 
salem. We busied ourselves all the day in reading the 
Old Testament Scriptures, which give an account of all 
these things. Returning to Beirut, we found little Anna 
Maria quite well and overjoyed to see us. Her exceeding 
great delight the little thing manifested very touchingly 
to us in standing, just for a moment, at her mother's knee, 
and then crossing over and standing with me, just for a 
moment, and so, from one of us to the other, for a long 
time, crossing and re-crossing, until she had worn out her 
happiness. We got back to Smyrna in the month of May, 
but we were required to pass a quarantine of a month, two 
or three miles from the city, down the gulf. Maria 
Shrewsbury and our little John and Lizzie frequently 
came down to cheer us, but at last we got home again to 
them and to our work. 

Our fourth daughter, Susan Dunlap, was born in the 
city of Smyrna February 6, 1845, and was baptized by 
the Rev. Thomas P. J ohnson. Shortly before this event, 
our dear Maria Shrewsbury began to be indisposed, and 
the indisposition increased upon her daily. There was 
more or less of typhoid fever in the city. I wished to 
send for Dr. Wood ; she objected stoutly. There were- no 
symptoms alarming me ; she was simply languid and pre- 
ferred to lie on the sofa without moving about much. 
This continued day after day. Several times I said to 
her, without really feeling any fear myself, "Maria, you 
must let me call Dr. Wood ; this may be the beginning of 
typhoid fever." Still her unwillingness to have the doc- 
tor called continued and increased. Her indisposition 
having lasted about ten days, her sister meanwhile being 
all this time very unwell and remaining upstairs in her 



128 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



chamber, I became at last quite alarmed, and then my 
wife joined me in insisting positively that the doctor 
must be called. When he came he told me that we had 
lost too much time, that the case was decidedly typhoid 
fever. He required her to take to her bed, and began to 
treat the case vigorously, but could not break the hold 
which the fever had secured. She was a great favorite 
with everybody, and we had plenty of friends to assist in 
nursing her. She rapidly grew worse. Delirium came 
on, and in a short time death closed the scene on the 11th 
day of January, 1845, to our unspeakable loss. We 
buried her in the graveyard of the Dutch Consulate, and 
a marble tombstone marks the spot. 

She was a noble woman, had made a profession of her 
faith publicly in the Second Presbyterian church, 
Charleston, along with other new converts, just before 
coming to Smyrna with her sister. She naturally missed 
the many and various means of grace to which she had 
been introduced during a revival season. The experi- 
enced Christian who becomes a missionary feels this loss 
when he first enters upon his new life. Besides his closet 
and Bible and the family altar, and the weekly prayer- 
meeting of the missionaries, and possibly one weekly 
public service in English, he has no helps, such as abound 
in his native country, where Christian intercourse on all 
sides is at all times to be constantly enjoyed. Here was 
a young and inexperienced believer suddenly cut off from 
almost all outside assistance. What is a very serious ex- 
periment in a confirmed believer when he quits a Chris- 
tian country and goes out into the darkness, is a very 
dangerous experiment for the young Christian. How 
soon Maria began to feel its effects I cannot say. They 
first began to be observed by me when I noticed a repug- 
nance manifested by her to some of the doctrines of the 
Bible. Every Sunday I was expounding the Epistle to 
the Romans at a service in English in my house, which 
a number of persons, including my translators, attended. 
Some of the truths set before us by the apostle, Maria felt 
that she could not receive. She had superior powers of 
mind, like her two' sisters, and she began to reason against 
Paul's doctrine. Her own discovery of her opposition 



LIFE A^IOXG THE AEilEXIAXS. 



129 



to the Word of God made her begin to doubt whether she 
was a Christian. Had this occurred to her at home, where 
Christian influences would have surrounded her on all 
sides, these temptations to unbelief by the arch-enemy 
might have been more easily overcome, but she was out in 
the darkness, and to a considerable degree was standing 
solitary and alone. I tried often to help her, but did not 
succeed. I said to her that I ought to remind her my 
view of Paul's meaning was not accepted by all Christian 
believers. Many good Methodist people, and intelligent 
ones too, interpreted him differently from me. "But," 
she replied, "I see with my own eyes that you do correctly 
apprehend his meaning, so that I can't take any comfort 
from Arminian errors of interpretation." Mr. Calhoun, 
who admired her greatly, sought to relieve her mind, but 
in vain, so did other missionary brethren. The trouble 
with her was that she saw distinctly the absolute sov- 
ereignty of God, as Paul sets it forth, and, as her heart 
did not cheerfully bow to that sovereignty, she could not 
hope that she was a true Christian. The darkness which 
enveloped my dear young sister grew deeper continually. 
At last, as she told me, she gave up all reading of the 
Bible and praying. She continued in this fearful condi- 
tion for some months. At length, in the mercy of our 
Lord, the darkness began to abate a little. Gradually, 
though very slowly, she was brought out of it, and light 
shone into her soul and peace with the light, the dreadful 
temptation was at an end, and she was again a cheerful 
Christian believer. All this preceded, by several months, 
the indisposition which ended so fatally. She had always 
been, ever since her arrival in Smyrna, the object of pe- 
culiar affection on my part. I loved her as my own sister. 
The dreadful darkness which had come into her soul made 
her an object likewise of intense solicitude on our part. 
When, therefore, her sister being still confined to her bed, 
I stood by myself at Maria's dying bedside, and saw her 
breathe her last, my heart said, "God be thanked that I 
have seen you at last safe over the river." 



CHAPTEE VI. 

Visit America for a Year, but my Return was not 
Allowed. — What Followed. 
1846-1859. 



HE two years which followed our return from 



J- Jerusalem, in June, 1844, were perhaps the busiest 
of my missionary life. Our modern Armenian New 
Testament, after careful revision, had been printed and 
published, and sent into wide circulation. So had the 
translation of the Psalms into modern Armenian, pre- 
pared by Mr. Dwight and myself. There had begun, 
especially in Constantinople, quite a controversy between 
intelligent Armenians, who adhered zealously to their 
own church views, and the missionaries there. The doc- 
trines of grace set forth on our side were vigorously op- 
posed. So there were numerous tracts and pamphlets 
produced in the discussion, the missionaries using our 
Smyrna press, and their adversaries establishing one of 
their own at Constantinople. Every month we issued a 
sermon, by some one of our brethren, adapted to the times. 
The Magazine of Useful Knowledge, which I edited, a 
large part of it religious matter, was appearing every 
month. My time was chiefly occupied, however, with 
abridging, and, with Andreas Varjabed's assistance, 
translating D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation in 
Germany. 

It was a period of agitation in the Armenian mind, of 
which we were doing our best to take the advantage. This 
agitation had, indeed, begun years before. When the 
truly great Sultan Mahmoud died, in July, 1839, his em- 
pire was on the brink of ruin. He had massacred the 
Janizaries, the rulers of previous Sultans, but their de- 
struction required him to organize an army of soldiers 
like those of Europe. His navy had been in a very re- 
markable way, to the astonishment of both Europe and 




A PERIOD OF AGITATION. 



131 



Asia, destroyed by the English fleet at Navarino. He 
had built and sent forth a new one, but his rebellious vas- 
sal, Mehemet Ali, had beaten his army of eighty thousand 
in Mesopotamia, and treacherously got possession of his 
navy. At this very time, Mahmoud, of the eagle eye and 
the iron will, departed this life, and Abdul Med j id, his 
son, sixteen years old, immediately ascended the throne. 
Reshid Pasha, reputed to be very favorable to Great 
Britain, became the prime minister. Yery soon was 
issued that famous and historic rescript, entitled "Haiti 
Scheriff of Gut Hane." It was first promulgated at Gut 
Ilane, which signifies the rose garden, a portion of the 
ground within the Seraglio Point. According to this re- 
markable document, all bribery and corruption were to 
cease in the Ottoman Empire, and perfect equality of 
rights was to be enjoyed by all its inhabitants. No one 
was to be executed without having a public trial. The 
true value of this document (in the words of Dr. Ham- 
lin) is to be sought in its effects upon the people, more 
than upon the administration of the government. It 
went all through the empire. It woke up the slumbering 
East. It was the first voice that announced to the people 
the object of government and the legitimate ends to be 
attained by it. It gave the Rayahs (that is to say, the 
Christian subjects of the empire) courage to contend for 
their rights. It brought forward the novel idea, that men 
should be equal before the law, and all accused persons 
should be entitled to a fair and public trial. It set aside 
the powerful and pernicious clique of government bank- 
ers. It diminished the civil power of the clergy. In a 
word, it loudly changed the current of thought, putting 
it into new channels, never to revert again to the old. It 
kindled the rage of the old Mussulmans, but it greatly ex- 
cited the hopes of the party of progress among the Turks, 
as well as those of the oppressed Rayahs. 

It was about three years after the publication of this 
remarkable constitution for the Turkish empire that an 
Armenian named Car abet, otherwise called Hovakim, 
was executed as an apostate from Islam. His headless 
body was found lying in a public street on the outside of 
the Seraglio walls. His head, with a Prank's cap stuck on 



132 



MY LIFE AJSTD TIMES 



it, was put between his thighs. Thus, after a very short 
period, the sacred Haiti Scheriff is trampled under foot, 
to the rejoicing of the old ILussulman party, but to the 
extreme dissatisfaction and contempt and vexation of 
the party of progress amongst the Turks. It also aroused 
the indignation of all the European ambassadors at Con- 
stantinople, Russia alone excepted. The English ambas- 
sador, Sir Stratford Canning, took the lead, insisting that 
the Sultan should make a solemn promise that such an 
act on the part of his government should never be re 
peated. This was given first by the Grand Vizier of the 
empire, but repeated, in a personal interview, by the Sul- 
tan, which Sir Stratford had demanded. And the next 
day the Sultan gave his assent to all this, in a public audi- 
ence, adding, "Neither shall Christianity be insulted in 
my dominions, nor shall Christians be in any way perse- 
cuted for their religion.'' 

How could the events, to which I have been referring, 
fail of producing great excitement amongst all the differ- 
ent races, providentially associated together, in Constan- 
tinople, and the other cities of the Turkish empire, each 
of these races zealously addicted to its own religion \ 

Their effect upon the Christian R ayahs was very de- 
cided. They had understood the Haiti Scherijf to confer 
on them important and sacred rights. They saw these 
rights were trampled on in the execution of Car abet. Of 
course, there was excitement amongst them. The spirit 
of religious inquiry, which had been previously roused 
amongst the Armenians, was naturally very much pro- 
moted. The missionary cause amongst them was much 
advanced. These events sensibly diminished the power 
and influence of the patriarch and other ecclesiastics. 
Their attention also being absorbed by these events, the 
missionaries were enabled to go quickly on with their 
work in its various departments. 

Nevertheless, in this very period of deep interest and 
high excitement, I was being providentially led to con- 
sider, seriously, the question of returning with my fam- 
ily to my own country for a visit of twelve months. Ten 
years before this time, when we first sailed for Smyrna 
to be missionaries, we had no expectation of ever return- 



MY VISIT TO AMERICA. 



133 



ing home again. At that period the prevalent idea was 
that the foreign missionary embarked for his whole life. 
It was enlistment, then, for the whole war. The church 
had not then come to consider it expedient that mission- 
aries should have a furlough after some years' service. 
Still, upon occasion, it sometimes happened that a mis- 
sionary had to return home on some particular errand of 
importance. In my case, there was a failure of eyesight, 
which had indeed slightly manifested itself at the close of 
my Seminary life, but which my peculiar missionary call- 
ing, and especially the effects of small-pox, had aggra- 
vated. The inspection of manuscript, and the examina- 
tion of proof sheets in the Armenian language, is quite 
trying, even to a sound eye, owing to the great similarity 
of many of the letters used. I began to think a year's 
rest would be advantageous. And, as my father and 
mother were approaching three-score and ten, and re- 
peatedly expressed the desire to see me once more, I was 
conferring with my brethren at Constantinople, and re- 
luctantly considering how I could best prepare for the 
voyage and visit. 

During the year 1845 there began to be talk of organiz- 
ing an evangelical alliance of all Christian believers. 
This was to be attempted in the summer of 1846 in the 
city of London. As this period approached, and the de- 
termination was reached that I should go on my visit 
home, my brethren in Constantinople expressed the wish 
that, passing through London, I should represent our 
mission in this convention. The invitation to this assem- 
bly had at first been for all evangelical churches and min- 
isters. Afterwards it was published that no slaveholder 
would be admitted. The anti-slavery discussion in the 
United States, I well remember as beginning during my 
last year at Princeton, and I had read perhaps the very 
first number of William Lloyd Garrison's paper, The Lib- 
erator, but it had made little progress in America, up to 
the time of my embarkation for Smyrna. During the ten 
or eleven years of my missionary life up to this time, it 
had not very greatly interested me, being absorbed in my 
Armenian work. The published denial to all slaveholders 
of admission to the alliance, of course, set me to thinking, 



134 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



and what I had never thought of before arrested my atten- 
tion now, viz., that, in a sense, I was one of those who 
were guilty of the sin of holding slaves. In the course of 
correspondence, I mentioned this discovery, which I had 
made, to my brethren in Constantinople. More than one 
of them had, not long before this, returned from Amer- 
ica, and they wrote me at once, very positively, that unless 
I could get rid of this relationship, I would never be able 
to get back to the Armenian work. Consequently, I wrote 
at once to my wife's sister, saying that we renounced all 
right or title to any property in these slaves, but I re- 
solved at the same time to abjure the honor of a seat in the 
alliance. To my astonishment, I found my brother-in- 
law, Dr. Thomas Smyth, in London. He had overworked 
his strength, and had crossed the Atlantic for rest. He 
urged my attending the alliance with him, stating that 
they had resolved to receive slaveholders, at the prelim- 
inary conferences, under protest. I had engaged our 
passage to Xew York, and had some ten days to spare be- 
fore sailing from Liverpool, so we went in together. Dur- 
ing the whole time of my attendance, this Evangelical 
Alliance proved to be nothing at all but a gathering of 
abolitionists, to denounce slaveholders for their sins. 
There were present well-known Unitarian and Univer- 
salist ministers, against whose membership not a word 
was raised. These were more evangelical than any slave- 
holder could be ! There were some twenty-odd Ameri- 
cans in the preliminary conference, nearly all from the 
Nprthern States, but, to a man, they all resisted the claim 
of an evangelical alliance to legislate against slavehold- 
ing. Dr. Skinner, of North Carolina, originally, but 
then of Philadelphia; Dr. Humphreys, originally of 
Massachusetts, but then of Louisville; Dr. Smyth and 
myself, if I remember rightly, were all that hailed from 
the South. Dr. Samuel H. Cox, of New York, was the 
acknowledged leader on the American side. After some 
ten days' earnest discussion, the question of admitting 
slaveholders to an evangelical alliance was referred to a 
co mm ittee. Their report came in on Saturday night. 
There was intense excitement in the body. The report ex- 
cluded all slaveholders. Sir Culling Eardley Smith, 



MY VISIT TO AMERICA. 



135 



chairman of the body, was manifestly for rushing the re- 
port through, without discussion. As he was about to 
put the question, I lifted my voice in protest, which 
caused a check in the chairman's movement. Dr. Smyth, 
who was standing alongside of me, ejaculated that I was 
a missionary from Turkey, thinking thereby to give some 
weight to my few words of protest. Dr. Humphreys, who 
was standing on the other side of me, cried out that he 
seconded my protest. Dr. Smyth did the same. And 
then, to my great delight, one after another, if I do not 
mistake, the whole American delegation backed us up. 
But, nevertheless, the report was adopted. 

My time was up, and on Monday morning I took my 
family to Liverpool, and sailed for New York. The 
Evangelical Alliance met that morning, and the chairman 
called on the Rev. Gorham Abbott, of Massachusetts, a 
most devout and lovely Christian brother, whom I well 
knew, to lead the Alliance in prayer. What followed was 
afterwards reported to me. Mr. Abbott's was a most 
touching prayer, deploring before the Lord our Saviour 
the sad division which had arisen in the body, and be- 
seeching that it might yet be healed. After that, the 
Americans spoke again, explaining to their English 
brethren that the state of public sentiment amongst Chris- 
tians generally, in their country, was such that the report 
could not be sustained. Accordingly, it was recommitted, 
and so modified as to be acceptable to all. How much 
the modifications amounted to I cannot now recall. 

On my arrival in New York I was received by my 
brothers, James and Ellison, and my sisters, Susan and 
Jane Anne, with a very warm welcome. There was an 
English girl, some fifteen years old, in Smyrna, to whose 
father, an honest blacksmith, I had been helpful in in- 
ducing him to give up intoxicating drink. Mr. Jones was 
grateful, and when my wife wished to get Harriet's 
help in carrying our youngest child across the water, he 
gave his cheerful consent, and I promised in remunera- 
tion to give her a year's schooling at some good New Eng- 
land institution, and to procure her safe passage home 
again. My first business, after arrival in New York, was 
to take Harriet Jones to Hartford, Conn., and place her 



136 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



with Mrs. Bird in a school which her husband, the Rev. 
Mr. Bird, formerly a missionary to Syria, had recently 
established there. Harriet was a dear, good child, a pro- 
fessing Christian, very much attached to little Susie and 
her mother, and we were greatly attached to her. Susie 
took quickly to her uncle James, in place of Harriet. His 
petting won her heart, and using the Greek language, 
which was the most familiar to her, she called him "allo- 
papa," that is, my other father. The steamship South- 
erner was about to sail on her first or second voyage to 
Charleston, and my family all went with my brothers 
and sisters in her. I felt it became me to repair first 
to Boston, and report to the Prudential Committee of the 
Board. Secretary Anderson, who had been at my house 
in Smyrna, took me home with him to the neighboring 
village of Roxbury. My visit was of several days. We 
went in together every morning, and I spent the day at 
the missionary rooms. On one of those evenings, as we 
walked home together, I turned to him suddenly, and 
said, "Dr. Anderson, I have lately discovered that I am 
a slaveholder through my wife." He started, as if I had 
shot him. He said, "I am very sorry to hear what you 
say/' and he proceeded to tell me how necessary it would 
be to rid myself of that relationship. I told him what I 
had already written to my wife's sister, and he urged that 
if that did not prove to be sufficient, I would, on reaching 
Charleston, do whatever else was necessary to accomplish 
the result. He then gave me an account of what infinite 
trouble John Leighton Wilson's case had given both to 
Wilson and the Board. He said that when it was pub- 
lished throughout New England that I was a missionary 
from Charleston, the inquiry would be immediately 
raised whether I was a slaveholder ; and that the attack 
of the abolitionists upon the Board, which had quieted 
down somewhat, would be renewed with vigor, and, as in 
Wilson's case, it would cost the Board one-half their an- 
nual resources, besides giving them and me a great deal 
of annoyance by the public discussion. Dr. Wilson, it 
will be remembered, before becoming a foreign mission- 
ary, thought fit to send all his slaves, some eighteen in 
number, to Liberia, with the exception of one boy, whom, 



MY VISIT TO AMERICA. 



137 



for some reason or other, he allowed to remain with his 
ovm family as a slave. "The Board/' said Dr. Anderson, 
"had refused to give up the missionary Wilson, prefer- 
ring to submit to the bitterest and most injurious re- 
proaches on his account.'' As for himself, Dr. Anderson 
told me, and I record it here to his honor, that he would 
have seen the American Board shivered into fragments 
rather than have dishonorably and unjustly abandoned 
John Leighton Wilson. 

The discussion in the Evangelical Alliance had waked 
me up to the importance of the anti-slavery controversy. 
Sympathy with my own people was roused in me. I 
made no promise to Dr. Anderson. Arriving at home, my 
attention was soon drawn to the religious condition of the 
negroes in the city. In Dr. Smyth's church there were 
some three hundred colored members. I often looked at 
them, as they sat in the gallery, and felt how far preach- 
ing to his white congregation went over their heads. The 
same was true of Dr. Forrest's church, the First Presby- 
terian, where there were some five hundred negro mem- 
bers. In the different Methodist churches the colored 
membership was some five thousand. In all the other 
churches, especially the Baptist, there was a large colored 
membership, so that the total colored membership in 
Charleston could not have been less than some eight or 
ten thousand persons. It was divided out more or less 
thoroughly into classes, under the leadership of chosen 
colored men of good repute. There were at least twelve 
thousand negroes, however, in Charleston, not included 
in this membership, and there was good reason to believe 
that, among the colored leaders, many were both incompe- 
tent and unfaithful. Before I went abroad my thoughts 
had turned to this people, and I had considered the ques- 
tion of following in the track of Dr. C. 0. Jones, who was 
an apostle to the negroes of Liberty county, Ga. But the 
call of the heathen world, where no gospel at all had ever 
been preached, appeared to me to outweigh that of negroes 
in this Christian country, where, in a great many of the 
Christian churches throughout the whole South, more or 
less attention was paid to their spiritual wants. Besides 
this, in the city of Charleston, and no doubt in many 



138 



MY EIFE JLXD TIMES. 



other Southern cities and towns, as well as in country 
neighborhoods, the white children, in many a family, 
were teaching the negroes, old and young, to read the 
Bible. Very often, however, during my missionary life, 
my thoughts had reverted to the negro field at home, and 
sometimes I questioned whether I had done right to turn 
my back on it. But coming back to my native city, from 
missionary labors to the Armenians, who are a nominally 
Christian people, my old interest in the Southern negroes 
1 naturally reasserted itself. I thought I saw plainly that 
Christianity, as accepted by white masters, had not ade- 
quately impressed itself on their poor black dependents. 
It seemed very clear that the men of my race could not 
properly discharge their duty to their slaves vicariously. 
They could not righteously meet their religious obliga- 
tions to human beings, providentially brought under their 
control and care, by throwing them upon the shoulders of 
haK-instructed men of their own color. I said to myself, 
it certainly is time for some white minister to make a 
beginning of public instruction, specially and separately, 
for the negroes, in the performance of which he should be 
assisted by white teachers under his leadership. Such a 
beginning, I was convinced, with the blessing of God. 
must be followed by auspicious results, in more than one 
direction. Conferring with my brother William, who 
was an elder in the Second Presbyterian church, consid- 
erably younger than myself, but in whose religious char- 
acter and sound judgment I had the very highest confi- 
dence. I found him perfectly alive to these views, and I 
had good reason to consider him a fair representative of 
the sentiments of the most enlightened Christian people 
in the city. 

But I mvself was a missionary to the Armenians, at 
home only for a visit. !My work amongst them was wait- 
ing for me. It was an important and encouraging one, 
attractive to me in the highest degree, and, as being liter- 
arv work, was suited to my individual taste, shared by 
me with brethren in whom I had the highest confidence, 
and for them all undying affection. I was happy in that 
work. There was no position in the church at home that 
I would compare with it in any respect. Yet I did feel 



MY VISIT TO AMERICA. 



139 



that, as a Southern Christian minister of the white race, 
and indirectly a slaveholder myself, the negro had a claim 
on me which I was bound to consider. 

My own judgment being thus unsettled by conflicting 
views of a question very important to me, I naturally de- 
sired to confer with Dr. Anderson. I had been consider- 
ably intimate with him. We had been in each other's 
families, and so knew each other well. I still possess sun- 
dry letters addressed to me by him during my life in 
Smyrna, upon which he wrote "Private" and "Confiden- 
tial." Thus, as early as November, I had communicated 
to him some impressions made on my mind by the infor- 
mation I had acquired of the religious condition of the 
negroes in Charleston. I continued to acquaint him by 
letters, at different times, with the course of my own 
thoughts on this subject, and I have in my possession 
brief notes showing the drift of the letters which I wrote 
to him. I was not writing to him for advice. It was, on 
my part, just a friendly correspondence with one whom 
I greatly revered, intended to show him how I was feeling 
regarding this matter, and to draw forth some expression 
of his feelings in return. The first few of his replies I 
have lost, but I still possess one of date January 8, 1847. 
This was a hurried and exceedingly brief one. He was 
a very busy man, continually having difficult questions 
pressing on his mind — and many of them both very diffi- 
cult and very delicate. In^he letter just referred to (and 
I feel sure this was the case with the others, which during 
these fifty years have passed out of my possession) there 
is not one consideration presented by him in favor of my 
return to Smyrna. I subjoin a copy of my reply to this 
brief letter. 

[Copy.] 

Charleston, January 20, 1847. 
Rev. R. Anderson, D. D., Secretary, etc. 

My Dear Brother : Yours of the 8th inst. I duly received. I 
remember your observation to me in Smyrna respecting the dis- 
agreeable position into which you were once put by an appointed 
missionary, who was led to doubt whether he ought not to remain 
at home, but who desired to get the Prudential Committee to take 
on them the responsibility of deciding that he ought to stay, and 



110 



MY LIFE A2s T D TIMES. 



who labored hard, but in vain, to get them to take that respon- 
sibility. 

I am far from wishing you, or them, to take this responsibility 
in my case, though I am sincerely desirous to get your aid, as far 
as possible, in deciding the question myself. And I think that a 
missionary, twelve years connected with you, and always enjoying 
your confidence, has a right to your brotherly advice and counsel. 

Will you pardon me for saying that I have looked for some con- 
siderations to be suggested by you on the side of my returning to 
Turkey? 

It has occurred to me that perhaps you thought the question was 
from the first really decided in my mind; but this was not and is 
not now the case, although I feel that I am gradually verging to a 
decision. 

One other cause for your silence, respecting the claims of the 
Armenian work upon me, has suggested itself, and I beg that you 
will candidly tell me if it has really had any weight in your mind. 
Do you apprehend any embarrassment to the board from my return, 
in reference to that nominal relation which I mentioned to you that 
I had renounced? or in reference to the subject of slavery? And 
has this affected your letters to me in any shape or form? 

I know what trouble you have had with the ease of Mr. Wilson, 
and how natural it will be for people to be inquiring all about me 
when I come to set sail again for Smyrna. As to that relation 
above referred to, the matter stands exactly in statu quo — I have 
done nothing more about it. 

Yours (signed), J no. B. Adgeb. 

To this letter I received a reply, of which I subjoin a 
copy: 

Missionary House, Boston, January 27, 1847. 
Rev. J. B. Adger, Charleston, 8. C. 

My Dear Brother: I yesterday received yours of the 20th. I 
fully admit your right to whatever brotherly advice and counsel 
my circumstances enable me to give you. I will say more; you 
are entitled to the utmost frankness on my part, and you shall 
have it. In neither of my letters do I believe that I had so much as 
a thought of your ever becoming so related to slavery as to occasion 
us any trouble. I did not think of it, and consequently my seeming 
reserve was not owing to that. What effect thinking much on that 
subject would have, I cannot tell. I believe you are as desirous as 
any one I know of to do what is right in relation to that thing, and 
I have not believed myself called on to spend time in imagining 
what troubles you might be the occasion of in future. 

I have, however, rather inferred from the course this question 



MY VISIT TO AMERICA. 



141 



has had in your mind since your return to Charleston that, in point 
of fact, it would seem to you to be duty to spend the residue of your 
life in missionary labors in the South. I can hardly tell why that 
impression preponderated, only that it did; nor have I felt the least 
inclined to blame you or to think less favorably of you. This, no 
doubt, has restrained my pen somewhat, but probably not much. 

My avoiding the responsibility of positive advice is habitual with 
me. It is a great thing to go on a mission, and greater to take a 
family of children abroad ; and I feel that nothing but a man's own 
spontaneous convictions of duty will justify his going. 

I should certainly rejoice, as all the brethren of your mission of 
course would, if you saw your duty to return clear, and should act 
upon that conviction ; and if it were necessary to show the sincerity 
of my desire for this result, by arguing in favor of your so doing, 
I would fill a sheet with arguments. But I can say nothing which 
you do not already know better than I do, and I cannot bring my- 
self to write arguments merely to show my sincerity. You know 
we are in the crisis of our work amongst the Armenians, and that 
there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Armenians scattered over 
Turkey, who are inquiring what they shall do to be saved, but have 
not yet been brought to take a stand on the Lord's side; and that, 
in order to this, we must, in the shortest possible time, fill the 
country with competent evangelists and books. But I am arguing, 
and I stop. 

Do that which you regard as right, my dear brother, whether it 
be to go or stay. I shall not distrust your integrity in any event. 
With affectionate regards to Mrs. Adger, as ever, most truly yours, 
(Signed) Ruftjs Anderson, 

Secretary of A. B. C. F. M. 

The impression made on my mind by this letter was 
not pleasant. I had not asked for "positive advice/' much 
less official advice, or for his taking the responsibility of 
deciding the question for me. I had, in my letter to him, 
expressly disclaimed the wish for anything of this kind. 
I had written to him as an intimate friend, for "brotherly 
advice and counsel," expecting him to say something or 
other in some one of his letters indicating some desire for 
the continuation of my relations to the foreign missionary 
work. Not once had he ever reminded me, until I had 
dragged it out of him, that "there was a crisis in the Ar- 
menian work/' and that it was necessary, "in the shortest 
possible time, to fill the country with competent evangel- 
ists and books." It was rather unpleasant for Dr. Ander- 



142 MY LIFE AND TIMES. 

son to imply that I had wanted him to fill a sheet, or even 
a paragraph, with arguments for my return. 

But there was a portion of this letter that was even 
painful to me. It was where Dr. Anderson professed so 
decidedly that he had not given a thought to my "ever be- 
coming so related to slavery as to occasion us any trouble," 
and that he was not called on "to spend time in imagining 
what troubles you might be the occasion of in future." 

This correspondence is almost fifty years old, and, as 
I read it over to-day, I am able to realize that Dr. Ander- 
son had been thinking of so many and such great matters, 
since the day that we walked and talked together about 
my relationship to slaveholding, that he had quite for- 
gotten the earnest words he spoke that day, the anxious 
wishes he had expressed, that I could be freed from that 
relationship, and the very impressive history he had given 
me of the trouble and injury which John Leighton Wil- 
son's case had occasioned the Board, and how he foretold 
the probability of my case having the same effects. But, 
at the time of my receiving and reading this letter, that 
charitable supposition did not occur to me, and, as I am 
writing a history of what took place, I am bound to tell 
just how the letter operated on my feelings and conduct. 
^ I saw plainly the inconsistency. I could not resist the 
impression that there was insincerity. I was led to sus- 
pect that from the time we had walked and talked about 
this matter, Dr. Anderson had been resolved to make it 
very easy for me to dissolve my connection with the Amer- 
ican Board. I was not willing to become another incum- 
brance in the way of that honored Board. They should 
not have to defend me, as they had to defend John Leigh- 
ton Wilson. I would make it easy for them to be rid of 
the second slaveholder. 

Accordingly, on the 19th of April, I wrote my resigna- 
tion, but delayed sending it for some days, that I might 
receive letters that I was expecting from my brethren in 
Smyrna and Constantinople. Having received and con- 
sidered these, I forwarded my resignation on the 19th of 
May, and it was accepted. I said to the Secretary, "It is 
needless for me to go into any detail of the reasons which 
have led me to this determination. They may be summed 



MY RETURN NOT ALLOWED. 



143 



up in one statement — I feel that I am called, in the provi- 
dence of God, to give myself to the work of preaching the 
gospel to the blacks." Referring to the twelve happy 
years I had spent in the mission, and the many tender ties 
which I was rupturing, I remarked that the state of my 
eyesight would have required me, had I been able to re- 
turn, to be transferred to some other department of the 
work, that I was very loath to quit that work, and that 
I would gladly go back and spend the residue of my days 
with the Armenians. Then, to the gentlemen of the com- 
mittee, and to himself, as also his colleagues at the mis- 
sionary house, I bade a respectful and affectionate fare- 
well. 

It did not appear to me needful or suitable that, in this 
official communication to the Board, I should refer to 
what had passed between me and Dr. Anderson. And 
here I must mention the somewhat remarkable fact, that, 
whereas some ten years before this, there were at least a 
dozen Southern missionaries connected with this Board, 
yet, in the providence of God, one way or another, every 
one of them was brought home either before or soon after 
my resignation, John Leighton Wilson being, perhaps, 
the very last one. 

Thus ended my twelve and a half years of personal ser- 
vice in the foreign missionary work. It had been a very 
happy life, both to me and to my wife, who shed more 
tears when it was decided that we could not go back than 
she had wept when we first set forth, leaving all that was 
dear behind. 

Here let me record my testimony to the exalted char- 
acter and genuine nobility of the missionaries with whom 
I was associated. Let me also state, as to their families, 
that, notwithstanding many severe trials encountered by 
them, still, it seemed to me, they were, on the whole, the 
happiest set with which I have ever been acquainted. 
Foreign missionary life, as I saw it, was certainly calcu- 
lated to be a happy one. It was a life of a very simple 
faith. The missionary had only an economical support, 
could lay up nothing for the future, and trusted his wife 
and children after him to the good providence of his Mas- 
ter. Then the conduct of the missionary's life also was 



MY LIFE AXD TIAIES 



very simple. He did not have to be much conformed to 
the world around him. In fact, the very object of his 
mission was to effect a change in the character, life and 
manners of the people to whom he came. The minister at 
home, in some things, must carefully conform to his con- 
gregation, for many of their ideas and customs are good 
and right. TTith the foreign missionary, it is different. 
He must set himself in opposition to their most cherished 
ideas and their most settled habits of life. While he en- 
deavors to give no offence, yet he must not seek to "please 
men."'" or he "cannot be the servant of Christ.''" The for- 
eign missionary life is calculated to make a man feel that 
he is a stranger and a pilgrirn in the world. And then, if 
his work is prosperous, as ours was, there is much to rouse 
the enthusiasm of the missionary. I would like to have 
spent my life in that work. I do not know any man whose 
career is more to be admired than that of my friend and 
colleague. Dr. Elias Eiggs. of Constantinople. He has 
spent his whole ministerial life of sixty-four years in the 
Levant, first in the Greek work, then in the Armenian 
and Bulgarian. A man of the rarest linguistic ability, 
mastering first the modern Greek, in which he preached 
like a native, he has spent many subsequent years in 
translating, or revising the whole Scriptures into Arme- 
nian, and. finally. Bulgarian. His wife, after many 
years of service, lies buried in that land. Their children 
after them are. with the exception of one. a professor in 
the Theological Seminary of the Dutch Reformed Church, 
Xew Brunswick. X. J., following in their parents' foot- 
steps. One. who became blind from scarlet fever, in very 
early childhood, got his education in America, and has 
served for years as a very useful professor in a mission- 
ary college at Aintab. near to the ancient Cilicia and Tar- 
sus, where the Apostle Paul was born and reared. All 
Dr. Riggs 3 children, sons and daughters, are missionaries, 
and now. towards the end of his eighty-sixth year, he is 
still working, waiting, and watching for the blaster. 
TTliat a splendid course this man has run ! TThere is the 
minister in America who has lived sixty-four years of 
more useful life \ But. alas ! in this year of 1S96. in 
this month of September, it does seem as if he. and all his 



MY RETURN NOT ALLOWED, 



145 



children, are in great danger of being massacred by the 
Turks. Verv well ; if that turns out to be so, there will 
just be so many added to the "noble army of martyrs," 
whom we honor so much, along with "the glorious com- 
pany of the apostles" and "the goodly fellowship of the 
prophets." 

My connection with the American Board was now 
brought to a close, not from any purpose or wish of mine, 
but directly and chiefly through the influence of ignorant 
K"ew England fanaticism, and unscriptural and unchris- 
tian prejudice against slaveholders. Of course, it all 
came to pass in the wise providence of God. The time 
had come for me to return to my own people, who were 
suffering the unjust reproaches, both of the North and of 
Great Britain, and henceforth I was to cast in my lot 
with them, and bear my share of all the future would 
bring forth. There was a great work, too long neglected, 
in Charleston, and a small beginning of it was now to be 
commenced. With other hands than mine, and by the 
magic of another voice, namely, that of John Lafayette 
Girardeau, it was subsequently to grow apace. Great 
events were about to occur. A certain mighty prejudice 
in Charleston was to be overthrown, and Christian mas- 
ters there and elsewhere were to put forth more direct ■ 
efforts for the religious instruction and eternal salvation 
of their slaves. There was to be a dreadful war, and 
slavery was to come to an end. Charleston, where the 
war began, was to continue one of its chief centres to its 
close, and the feeble commencement of negro separate 
religious education directly by white men, was to create 
and foster a strong Christian affection between blacks 
and whites, and this was to prove eminently propitious to 
our beleaguered city during all the dangers of the war. 

To myself, personally, another and very acceptable re- 
sult was to come. My eyes, so weary with the trying work 
of Armenian reading, writing, and proof reading, were to 
have comparative rest. 

But the American Board's troubles about slavery and 
slaveholders were not yet to come to an end. John Leigh- 
ton Wilson's case had indeed (as Dr. Anderson told me on 
that walk to Roxbury) given them immense trouble, but 



146 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



that was nothing compared with what was to follow. The 
first public organized effort that I know of, on the part of 
the abolitionists, to bring the Board over to their ground, 
was made in 1840, at their annual meeting, held in Prov- 
idence, Ehode Island. It came in the form of a memorial, 
remonstrating against the Board 7 s accepting money from 
slaveholders. In answer to this memorial, the Board ac- 
^ knowledged the justice of the ground which it took, that 
God will not accept the fruits of robbery for sacrifice, but 
pleaded the practical difficulty there was in discriminat- 
ing between the various persons at the South who were 
contributing to its treasury. This was enough for the 
abolitionists ; it gave them an entering wedge in the 
Board's acknowledgment that, on the whole, their prin- 
ciples and reasonings were correct. Thus, after thirty 
years' receipt and use of the money of slaveholders, and 
after all the foundations of the Board had been laid in 
blood and sin, it began to be determined that no more of 
such material should be employed in the superstructure. 

Of course, next year at Philadelphia, the abolitionists 
renew their onset, Their claim now is that the Board 
must break their studied silence on the subject of slavery, 
and show their sympathy with those Christians who abhor 
that system of abominations, and it is hinted that other- 
wise their income must be diminished. The Board's an- 
swer was that it had been organized simply to propagate 
the gospel amongst the heathen, and that this work would 
4 be enough for angels. But they went on to add that this 
Board could sustain no relation to slavery which implied 
approbation of it, or connection or sympathy with it. 

Again, in 1842, there are more memorials, as also in 
1844, and in that year occurs the first reference, on the 
part of the disaffected, to the holding of slaves by the 
Choctaw Indians, amongst whom the Board had long had 
a flourishing mission. This was a new point of attack, 
and the Board promised to look into the matter and give 
answer at their next annual meeting. 

In 1845 at Brooklyn, the Board were outspoken against 
^ the wickedness of the system of slavery. But they set 
forth, as amongst their fundamental principles, that 
church membership cannot be refused to any persons who 



WHAT FOLLOWED. 



147 



give evidence of repentance and faith, and also that the 
missionaries, in connection with the chnrches they have 
gathered, are the only rightful judges of this evidence. 
But, so far have the Board succumbed to the rising power 
of this tyrant fanaticism, that this year they write to the 
Choctaw missionaries that they should train their church 
members to the duty of emancipating their slaves. 

TTe recall to mind just here that it was this same year 
(1845), about four months previous to the meeting of the 
Board, that the General Assembly of the Presbyterian 
Church, Old School, meeting at Cincinnati, Ohio, while 
they condemned what no good man at the South, no Chris- 
tian slaveholder, will approve, viz., the evils that are in- S 
cidentally connected with the system of slavery, as with 
all human institutions and relationships, such as parent 
and child, husband and wife, did yet declare to the same 
effect with these two fundamental principles, adopted by 
the American Board, that "the church of Christ is a 
spiritual body, whose jurisdiction extends only to the 
religious faith and moral conduct of her members, and 
that she cannot legislate when Christ has not legislated, 
nor make terms of membership which he has not made." 
They added that they could not "denounce the holding of 
slaves as necessarily a heinous and scandalous sin, calcu- 
lated to bring upon the church the curse of God, without 
charging the apostles of Christ with conniving at such 
sin, and introducing into the church such sinners." 
Standing firm on this Scriptural ground, this church has 
ever since enjoyed peace and quiet on the subject of 
slavery, while, at the same time, through her ministers 
and churches at the South, she has been humbly endeavor- 
ing to preach the gospel to both bond and free. 

In 1846 the subject of slavery was hardly introduced at 
the Board's annual meeting. Perhaps there had come to 
pass a lull in the abolitionist war, and this being the very 
year of my return home, perhaps I might thus account 
for Dr. Anderson's seeming, in his correspondence with 
me, to have forgotten the great anxiety he had expressed 
to me at Eoxbury, respecting all the trouble my slave- 
holding was about to bring upon the Board. 

However, be this as it may, the war was renewed, and 



148 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



in great vigor, at the very next meeting, viz., in 1847. It 
was felt that the missionaries in the Indian country had 
v not given proper heed to the instructions about emancipa- 
tion, and that a secretary must be sent out to investigate 
the matter of slavery among the Choctaws, and there 
having occurred two vacancies among the secretaries, 
these are filled with two new ones, both of them decided 
abolitionists, viz., the Rev. Mr. Treat and the Rev. Dr. 
Pomeroy. It soon became manifest what would be the 
effects of this election. 

At the next annual meeting, Boston, 1848, Secretary 
Treat, who had been sent to the Choctaws, made his re- 
port, and then, in the name of the committee, wrote his 
famous letter to the missionaries. Mr. Treat's letter 
takes the ground that "the system of slavery is always and 
everywhere sinful," and that "all slaveholding is sinful, 
too, except where it is involuntary, or continued solely for 
the benefit of the slave." The missionary must denounce 
it, "but discreetly/' ~No slaveholder may sit at the Lord's 
table, until he proves that he is free from all this guilt. 
The missionary must also abstain from the use of all slave 
labor in any form whatever. And their support may be 
withheld if they disobey these instructions. 

This monstrous production was reviewed by Dr. Hodge 
in hisBiblical Repertory for January, 1849. The reviewer 
described the letter as unexceptionable in manner, couched 
in the blandest terms, yet archiepiscopal in its tone 
and written just as the "Servant of Servants at Rome" is 
wont to write. He also points out how preposterous were 
the claims of the committee to the control over mission- 
aries and missionary churches. He dwells on the posi- 
tion taken against the use of slave labor in all the domes- 
tic and farming operations of the mission. Their poor 
sickly wives must not hire a slave to cook or wash for their 
large boarding schools, lest the system of slavery be 
thereby encouraged. And yet the whole North and the 
committee, doubtless, likewise were daily using the 
products of slave labor. This, said the reviewer, was 
straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel; it is being 
dreadfully troubled with the mote in our brother's eye, 
but quite indifferent to the beam in our own — it was a 



WHAT FOLLOWED. 



149 



carping at trifles in the laborious, devoted men in the 
wilderness, but blind to tenfold greater evils in the pam- 
pered churches at home. 

The effect of Dr. Hodge's review was sensibly felt at 
the missionary rooms, Boston. Immediately on its ap- 
pearance, the Secretaries, over their own names, send 
forth a disclaimer. There was nothing authoritative in 
the committee's correspondence with the Choctaw nation. 
The committee were only discussing with the missionaries 
certain important questions. 

It was at this time I addressed a letter to Dr. Anderson, 
a copy of which lies before me. It was dated January 15, 
1849, following their meeting in October, 1848. I said, 
"Be not offended if, with the freedom of an old friend of 
yours and a former missionary, and still an honorary 
member of the Board, I repeat here my remark made to 
you in Syria, that you are yielding to the abolitionists ! 
They are changing public sentiment, and you must speak 
somewhat in their language, or you are crippled. The 
pressure is tremendous. It seems, moreover, hard that 
you, who have, as you say, nothing directly to do with 
Southern slavery, should be made to share any part of 
the burden of Northern popular odium, which is cast on 
us of the South. . . . We, at the South, are standing 
on the Bible ground, and those who force you to speak 
out against us are standing on ground which they think 
higher than the Bible ! That we must sustain the institu- 
tion of slavery against the mad and wild interference of 
people outside our borders, is plain to me, even as a 
friend to the negro. Whether you ought to give up your 
own position and be forced into the new position of a lever 
to act on us, you must and you will, doubtless, decide for 
yourselves. But, in my view, there is no higher calling 
for the American citizen, as a citizen, than to stand in the 
breach with even a few, and contend for sound and just 
principles against the fury of the populace." 

In 1849, 1850, 1851, 1852 nothing worthy of note, in 
respect to this matter, occurs at the meetings of the 
Board, except that in 1852 it fell to the lot of this same 
Mr. Treat to bring in a report on the success of the Indian 
missions. And it was indeed a glowing report of the 



150 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



growing temperance, improving agriculture, advancing 
education, excellent government and constant, prayerful, 
intelligent and zealous piety of these same slaveholding 
Choctaws. As to the churches, he says, "When we enter 
their churches, we feel that the Lord, in very deed, is in 
the midst of them." 

In 1852, then, the Choctaw churches are not very great 
sinners, albeit fully tolerating in their communion a sys- 
tem pronounced in 1849 to be "always and everywhere 
sinful." 

In the annual meeting in 1853 another very fine report 
of progress among the Choctaws is read by this Mr. Treat. 
There is evidently a desire to have the action of 1848 pass 
into oblivion. But this may not be. At Hartford, Conn., 
in 1854, up comes the Choctaw question again, under the 
full blast of the well-known excitement about the admis- 
sion of Kansas as a free State, which so stirred the whole 
United States. There had also been legislation by the 
Choctaws against any citizens of the United States inter- 
fering with the rights of slaveholders. This legislation 
was provoked, it would seem, by the visit and letter of 
Mr. Treat, and especially by a suggestion that had been 
made to the mission, to seek release from their contract 
with the Choctaw nation about their boarding schools. 
The Choctaw legislation was very offensive to the aboli- 
tionists in that meeting of the Board. Accordingly, the 
Treat letter was fully endorsed, the Senior Secretary 
being absent from this meeting, on his official visitation 
to the missions of the Board in the East Indies. 

Friends of the Board in New York were protesting 
now against some of these proceedings. Consequently, 
the Rev. George W. Wood, of the Constantinople mission, 
(an acting secretary at the time, during Dr. Anderson's 
absence) was sent out to the Choctaw country, to arrange 
a new platform. I knew Mr. Wood well, and loved him 
much. We had been colleagues together for years in the 
Armenian mission. He had so much genuine kindness of 
heart, and so much gentleness of manner, and was withal 
so clear and discriminating in his mental powers, that not 
one man in ten thousand was fitted like him for such an 
embassy, albeit his proceedings in this case did not fully 



WHAT FOLLOWED. 



151 



comport with the character I had formed of my brother. 
The platform which he drew up was fully pervaded with 
the principles of abolition. It is simply amazing how 
such men as those missionaries are known to have been, 
were induced to sign it, for that Goodwater platform did 
not consist with what they had previously held. But no 
sooner did this platform, with Mr. Wood's comments, 
appear in the New York Observer, than the missionaries 
immediately forwarded to the Secretaries and committee 
their protest against the whole report. 

In October, 1855, the Board meets at Utica, K Y. 
The Senior Secretary, Dr. Anderson, was still in India. 
The other two Secretaries were both present. There is 
good reason to believe they had the missionaries' protest 
in their pocket. Yet the whole case before the Board is 
settled on the basis of the Goodwater platform, with no 
allusion to the protest. The missionaries are so aggrieved 
when these tidings reach them that they, or some of them, 
send on their resignation. No sooner had the Senior Sec- 
retary returned than he showed himself anxious to have 
the missionaries withdraw their resignation. The com- 
mittee, accordingly, propose this to the missionaries. 
These consent, on condition that the Treat letter and all 
the previous legislation of the Board about slavery, be 
considered as withdrawn, and the missionaries be allowed 
to go on in their work, "according to the instructions of 
our Lord and his apostles." The proposition of the mis- 
sionaries was not accepted ; yet, with these terms as de- 
manded by the missionaries lying before them, the com- 
mittee voted, for the ensuing year, the usual annual ap- 
propriation for the Choctaw mission, and continued to do 
the same until the year 1859. 

At the annual meeting in 1856, which occurred at New- 
ark, the Board, now guided by the Senior Secretary, 
seeks to set itself right by renewing the Brooklyn plat- 
form, where it was declared that the Board has no ecclesi- 
astical power and no control over the missionary churches, 
and remitting to the missionaries and their churches all 
questions of internal discipline as belonging rightfully to 
them alone. 

In 1857 the Board express themselves in the strongest 



152 MY LIFE AND TIMES. 

terms as to the high character and good conduct of the 
Choctaw missionaries, and the Prudential Committee's 
report tells how their stations had received decisive marks 
of divine favor. This report closes with the expression of 
the hope "that he who keepeth covenant and sheweth 
mercy will not forsake this interesting people." Where 
is, meanwhile, the resignation of the missionaries ? It is 
sleeping and taking its rest. The committee's conscience 
will not, at this time, suffer them to accept it ; they have 
before them the fear of the Covenant-Keeper, who has 
not forsaken and will not forsake the poor Choctaw 
churches. On the other hand, however, the fear of the 
abolitionists is also before the committee's eyes, and they 
dare not refuse to accept this resignation. It must rest 
for awhile, till the committee can see the path of duty and 
of safety more plain and clear before their eyes. 

But in the annual meeting, September, 1858, the Board 
finds its way out of the difficulty by the aid of Dr. Leo- 
nard Bacon, of Connecticut. He is appointed chairman 
of the sub-committee, on that part of the Board's annual 
report which relates to the Choctaw missionaries. In his 
report he speaks of certain religious bodies in the States 
nearest the Choctaws, among whom there has been a 
"lamentable defection from some of the first and most 
elementary ideas of Christian morality, insomuch that 
s/ ' Christianity has been represented as the warrant for a 
system of slavery which offends the moral sense of the 
Christian world, and Christ has thereby been represented 
as the Minister of Sin." The report also refers to the fact 
that "our brethren among the Choctaws are in ecclesiasti- 
cal connection with these religious bodies, and that from 
those States the leading Choctaws are deriving their no- 
tions of civilization and of government." The report 
concludes with the expression of a hope that the "Board 
might be relieved as early as possible from the unceasing 
embarrassments and perplexities connected with the mis- 
sions in the Indian Territory." This report was adopted 
unanimously. 

Thus the Board has at length been driven to the reso- 
lution of withdrawing its support from the Choctaw mis- 
sionaries and their churches, and that as soon as possible. 



WHAT FOLLOWED. 



153 



But how is this to be done ? With the prompt decision 
and bold, open, Christian frankness of men who believe 
what they say, namely, that these missionaries and 
churches are chargeable with a ''lamentable defection 
from some of the most elementary ideas of Christian 
morality,' 7 and so have made Christianity the warrant for 
the "sum of all villainies," "and Christ the Minister of 
Sin" ? Oh ! no. Not so does the committee express itself, 
but another correspondence is to be opened with the mis- 
sionaries, and it is again Mr. Treat, who is to write to 
these abandoned sinners. I subjoin his letter, with the 
reply of the missionaries. Let the reader notice with care, 
not only the fraternal kindness expressed in this letter for 
the missionaries, but also the cordial and friendly senti- 
ments entertained for the corrupt Choctaw churches. Let 
him also notice the grounds on which the committee pro- 
pose to base the separation, viz., "To free themselves from 
embarrassment and their treasury from loss." Still fur- 
ther, let him notice the reference to the "political agita- 
tions which are likely to take place in coming years." The 
separation was to be effected in 1859, and the war of the 
States was to begin in 1861. 

Letter of Mr. Secretary Treat. 

Misskwaky House, Boston, October 5, 1858. 
To the Choctaw Mission. 

Dear Brethren : The proceedings of the board at its recent 
meeting are already in your hands. You will have read with special 
attention the report of the committee on that part of the annual 
report which relates to your mission. This paper, you will remem- 
ber, has the following sentence, "It seems to your committee de- 
sirable that the board should be relieved, as early as possible, from 
the increasing embarrassments and perplexities connected with the 
missions in the Indian Territory." The Prudential Committee, con- 
curring in this opinion for various reasons, respectfully submit for 
your consideration, whether, in existing circumstances, it be not 
wise and expedient that your connection with us should be termi- 
nated. 

You will readily believe that this suggestion is made with un- 
feigned regret. We have always felt a deep interest in your labors. 
For the churches which you have gathered, we entertain the most 
cordial and friendly sentiments. For yourselves we have a strong 



154 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



fraternal feeling. For the older brethren, especially, we must ever 
cherish the tenderest affection. It is with emotions of sadness, 
therefore, that we contemplate a separation from you. 

We are not able, however, to call in question the facts on which 
the committee at Detroit founded their opinion. We find in our 
churches an increasing desire that the board may be freed from 
the embarrassments above referred to. By reason thereof, it is 
said, the donations to the treasury are less than they would other- 
wise be, to the manifest injury of our churches, on the one hand, 
and of our missions on the other. It is said, too, that the political 
agitations, which are likely to take place in coming years, must of 
necessity aggravate the evil. 

The report to which your attention is now called, refers to diffi- 
culties which you have encountered because of your present rela- 
tion. This consideration you will at once appreciate; the commit- 
tee have no occasion, therefore, to enlarge upon it. They will only 
add that these difficulties will be likely to increase hereafter. 

But there is another obstacle to our future cooperation which the 
report, already mentioned, did not notice. The Prudential Com- 
mittee question their ability to keep your ranks adequately filled. 
When tidings came to us a few days ago that our excellent friend 
and brother, Mr. Byington, was dangerously sick, an inquiry of 
painful interest arose, "Who can take his place?" We had no 
person ready to occupy such a post; and, in view of our past ex- 
perience, we could hardly expect to find one. 

The committee do not propose to raise any question as to the 
agreement of your opinions with those of the board. In any view of 
the case which they have been able to take, the result would be the 
same. The measure is proposed as one of Christian expediency; 
and it is on this ground that we present it for your consideration. 

We have said that this communication is made with unfeigned 
regret. But our sorrow is lessened by the hope that the interests 
of the people among whom you dwell will not suffer. We have 
thought it probable that you would come into connection with that 
missionary board under which two of your number formerly labored 
— a board which has your cordial sympathy and your entire confi- 
dence. Its missionaries are your "fellow-workers unto the kingdom 
of God" in a common field. This would facilitate a transfer of 
your relation. Ecclesiastically, you would make no change. 

Praying that the God of missions may keep you henceforth, and 
direct all your labors, so that the comfort and joy which you have 
hitherto received therein, shall be forgotten by reason of the more 
abundant coming of the Spirit of promise, I am, 

Very respectfully yours, in behalf of the Prudential Committee, 
S. B. Treat, Secretary of the A. B. C. F. M. 



"WHAT FOLLOWED. 



155 



Reply of the Missionables. 
Yakix Okchaya, Choctaw Nation, December 24, 1858. 
To the Rev. S. B. Treat, Secretary of the A. B. C. F. If. 

Dear Brother: We have received your kind letter in behalf of 
the Prudential Committee, under date of October 15th. We cor- 
dially reciprocate to yourself and the committee the fraternal feel- 
ings which you have expressed towards us. 

You refer us to the report in relation to our mission adopted by 
the board at Detroit, and especially to the following sentence, "It 
seems to your committee desirable that the board should be relieved, 
as early as possible, from the unceasing embarrassments and per- 
plexities connected with the missions in the Indian Territory." And 
you add, "The Prudential Committee, concurring in this opinion for 
various reasons, respectfully submit for your consideration, whether, 
in existing circumstances, it be not wise and expedient that your 
connection with us should be terminated." 

You do not mention the source of these "embarrassments and per- 
plexities" ; but we presume they arise from our relation to slavery. 
Such have been the peace and quiet amongst us on this subject for 
the past two years, that we fondly hoped the agitation had ceased, 
not to be renewed in such a way as seriously to affect us. Hence the 
action of the board at Detroit took us by surprise. 

We have taken into prayerful consideration the question sub- 
mitted to us by the Prudential Committee. We have sought for 
light on this subject. As for ourselves, through the favor of a kind 
providence, we see nothing in our present circumstances requiring 
a separation. Our position and course in reference to slavery are 
defined in our letter from Lenox, dated September 6, 1856. These, 
so far as they are known to our people, meet with their "'cordial 
approbation"; we are therefore going forward without disturbance 
in our appropriate work as missionaries. Whether circumstances 
may not hereafter arise which will render a separation necessary, 
we are, of course, unable to say; but we apprehend no such diffi- 
culty from the Choctaw people, or from others in this region. 

In regard to our course, above mentioned, we would remark that 
it is the same as has been uniformly preached by the mission from 
its commencement more than forty years ago. It had the full ap- 
probation of the secretaries and the Prudential Committee for more 
than five and twenty years, and was finally approved with perfect 
unanimity by the board at Brooklyn in IS 45. However great may 
have been our shortcomings in duty, we believe this our course to be 
right and scriptural; and we cannot believe that it is unwise and 
inexpedient for the board to sustain us in what is scriptural and 
right. 



156 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



In your letter you say, "We have thought it probable you would 
come into connection with that missionary board under which two 
of your number formerly labored." That board, as you have said, 
"has our cordial sympathy and entire confidence." But that board 
is the organ of the religious bodies in the adjoining States, "with 
which we are in ecclesiastical relations"; and the various religious 
bodies in these States are charged, in the report adopted by the 
board at Detroit, with "a lamentable defection from some of the first 
and most elementary ideas of Christian morality." Is not this an 
implied censure upon us? If not, is there not an inconsistency in 
the above suggestion of the Prudential Committee? We have no 
assurance that, under these circumstances, that board would con- 
sent to a transfer of the mission to their care. 

We therefore refer the question back to the Prudential Commit- 
tee, to be disposed of as they shall see best. We regret that either 
the board or the churches should sustain injury on our account. 
We, however, do not think that, in our labors as missionaries, we 
have done that which, by the gospel standard, can be regarded as 
just cause of offence. 

Be assured that it is not a light matter with us to differ with the 
Prudential Committee and the board as respects the question which 
you have submitted to us. In our opinion, important principles are 
involved. 

We trust and pray that the great Head of the church may give 
wisdom from above, that wisdom which is profitable to direct. 
Most respectfully yours, in behalf of the Choctaw Mission, 

C. Kingsbury, Chairman. 

C. C. Copeland, Clerk. 

The committee, now at length, despair of either forcing 
or persuading the missionaries in any respect to change 
their ground, either as to their work among the Choctaws, 
or as to their relation to the Board. They will stand just 
where they have stood for forty years, and the changes 
shall all be on the part of their friends in Boston. So the 
Prudential Committee, beat out by the firmness and pru- 
dence of these simple-hearted and clear-headed brethren 
in the wilderness, resolve, in obedience to the advice of 
the Board in 1858, to discontinue the Choctaw mission. 
Of course, Mr. Treat again appears upon the stage. He 
it is who must frame a reply to that remarkable docu- 
ment of C. Kingsbury, Chairman. It is not necessary for 
me to copy any part of that letter. My readers know 
pretty well what reply he will attempt to make. When 



WHAT FOLLOWED. 



157 



the Board meets in Philadelphia in 1859, it confirms the 
act of the committee, and so the affair ends. It certainly 
was, for me, a kind providence which, in 1846, while it 
relieved the Board of its connection with a slaveholding 
missionary, relieved me from my connection with a mis- 
sionary board, which, from the very time of my release, 
was in hot water down to 1859. 

Some reader of this chapter may be disposed to ask 
why was my course so different from that of the Choctaw 
missionaries. The Prudential Committee proposed to 
them a dissolution of their connection with the Board. 
The missionaries refer back the question to the Pruden- 
tial Committee for them to do about it whatever they 
thought proper ; but I decided myself to withdraw from 
the Board without putting the responsibility on the com- 
mittee. The difference in the two cases is manifest. In 
the one case, a missionary, who happened to be a slave- 
holder, is privately informed by the Secretary that his 
continued connection with the Board will bring great 
trouble on them. The way is made open for him to retire, 
if he so choose. The question is simply between the Sec- 
retary and him. There has been no public notice taken 
of his being connected with the Board. There seems also 
to have been a lull in the abolitionists' assault upon the 
Board. If the missionary chooses to retire, he does not 
commit himself to a public acceptance or adhesion to any 
false principles in morals, while possibly he may save the 
Board from any fresh assault about slavery ; so he sends 
in his resignation. 

The other case comes on after a dozen years subsequent 
to this resignation, when the American Board has been 
led, or driven, step by step, to take the extreme position 
that slavery is always and everywhere sinful, and that 
their Choctaw missionaries are involved in the guilt of it. 
Then they propose to these missionaries to acknowledge 
that on this ground they think it desirable and necessary 
that their connection with the Board should cease. The 
missionaries refuse to fall into the snare. They will not 
assent to the fanatical and unscriptural principles pub- 
licly set forth. They throw back on the Prudential Com- 
mittee the necessity of doing just as they think right in 



158 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



the premises. It lias raised the issue, let it take the re- 
sponsibility before the Christian public of cutting them 
off as unworthy of support; and so in 1859 they are cut 
off* 

In this account of what befell the American Board 
from 1840 to 1859, we see certain leaders in New Eng- 
land requiring it to accept their views of slavery and 
slaveholding. But the Board looks at these questions with 
different eyes. There followed, as is well known, severe 
and increasingly severe condemnation of the Board's 
opinions. Then, because the Board will not yield to the 
judgment of these leaders, public opinion is stirred up 
against it, and all Christian people are called on to with- 
hold from it their support. The result is, as everybody 
knows, that the resources of the Board are very much 
crippled. Those who have effected this result are con- 
scientiously religious people, but the consequences are 
very cruel. They extend to all the Board's missions 
throughout the world. They involve missionaries and 
their wives and children who never had anything to do 
with the "sin of slavery." It is starvation for these ; it is 
also starvation to the heathen. The Bread of Life is to be 
withheld. So far as this Board is concerned, no more 
missionaries to be sent forth ! ISTo more Christian schools 
to be established ! No more translations of the Bible ! 
No more multiplication of copies of the Word ! All these 
consequences from difference of opinions ! The Board 
shall believe what we believe, or we will ruin its business, 
and, so far as it is concerned, leave the missionaries and 
heathen to perish together. 

Now, I have an object-lesson to set before those, and 
the like of those, who, merely for opinion's sake, had thus 
destroyed almost one-half the resources and power of a 
magnificent benevolent society in the prosecution of its 
work. 

When American missionaries to the Armenians began 
to circulate the Scriptures among these people in their 

* In Vol. XII., pp. 736, 783 of the Southern Presbyterian Review 
I published a more full critique of the course of the American Board 
with its Choctaw missionaries. 



WHAT FOLLOWED. 



159 



modern tongue, earnest souls repaired to them for fuller 
instruction in the gospel. Soon they began to see that 
the creed of their church and its ceremonies were unscrip- 
tural and idolatrous. They could not any more worship 
the Virgin Mary nor the other saints. They would no 
longer confess their sins to a priest, but only to God, nor 
would they worship the holy cross, nor relics, nor pictures, 
and they denied the infallibility of the church, believing 
that the Scriptures are the only rule of faith and prac- 
tice. The Armenian patriarch and priest were greatly 
exasperated as these ideas began to prevail amongst their 
people. Their reproofs and warnings not availing any- 
thing, they soon resorted to persecution. Some of those 
who received these new opinions were first imprisoned, 
and then sent into cruel banishment to far distant places. 
Some suffered the bastinado, or beating with rods on the 
naked feet, in some cases the patriarch and priest in- 
flicting this punishment with their own hands. Not a 
few who had shops had their goods thrown into the streets 
and the doors locked against them. Sometimes men were 
forcibly turned out of their own houses into the street, 
and their wives and children with them. Worse than all, 
the fearful anathema was publicly pronounced against 
them, forbidding all men either to buy or sell, give any- 
thing to these guilty parties, or even speak to them ; so 
they were driven out, they and their families, to starve. 

Now, no other crimes were charged against these per- 
sons but that they did not believe what their church 
believes. They were all honest, industrious, good citi- 
zens, and subjects of the Porte. But, finding out that the 
Scriptures do not teach the creed of the Armenian 
Church, they no longer received it. The whole trouble 
was a matter of opinions. 

Look now at this picture, and then at the foregoing one. 
Are they not, to a large extent, identical ? The abolition- 
ists of New England thought slaveholding a sin. The 
American Board did not agree with them, and resort is 
had to violent measures to compel their acceptance of the 
abolitionist creed. Just so the Armenian ecclesiastics 
held it a sin for their people not to believe what their 
church taught, and they resort to violent measures to 



160 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



compel submission. Freedom of opinion and belief is 
the question in both places. In both cases, arguments 
prove inefficient, and force is cruelly employed. Still 
further, the date of both these affairs is one and the same. 
It was in 1845 that the American Board first succumbed 
to the rising power of abolitionism so far as to speak out 
against the wickedness of slavery, and to write to the 
Choctaw missionaries that they should train their church 
members to the duty of emancipating their slaves. But 
in 1847 the Board were made to feel that the missionaries 
had not given proper heed to the instruction about eman- 
cipation given them in 1845 ; and so, two decidedly aboli- 
tionist secretaries having been elected this year, one of 
these is sent out to enforce these instructions to the mis- 
sionaries, and thus 1845, 1846 and 1847 become the 
period when abolitionism gains absolute sway over the 
American Board. Just so in the case of the Armenian 
persecutors — it was early in 1845 that Matteos Patriarch 
resolved on more vigorous measures of persecution than 
had ever been employed; so all through 1846 he prac- 
tised the greatest cruelties against the poor Armenians, 
until, through the influence of the British ambassador, 
an end was put to it in 1847. 

Looking back from this year (1897) upon the occur- 
rences between 1846 and 1859, which I have here related, 
it is a humiliating spectacle to behold a great Christian 
institution like the A. B. C. F. M. forced, by fanatical 
principles, to take so unchristian a position. 

But is it not a very remarkable, and a still more humil- 
iating spectacle, to look back and observe how, in almost 
the very next year, these same fanatical ideas tore apart 
these great Christian States and people, and forced them 
into a cruel fratricidal war ? Some say the South went 
to war for slavery. It is more true that the North went 
to war against slavery. 

What was that influence which so aroused the North- 
ern States against slavery, and made them so clamorous 
for its abolition? Was it Christianity? Christianity, 
both in the days of the apostles and for many long cen- 
turies afterwards, did never so raise her voice. Chris- 
tianity operated, and still always operates, in a much 
profounder, far gentler, and more wholesome manner. 



WHAT FOLLOWED. 



161 



What light does the past history of Christianity shed 
upon this question % Adam Smith, Hallam, and Macaulay 
also, in his History of England, all speak of the abolition 
of slavery in Europe as having been very silently, and in 
its progress imperceptibly, effected, neither by legislative 
regulation nor physical force. What share Christianity 
had in effecting this abolition has been much disputed. 
Guizot, Muratori, Millar, Sismondi, and the Pictorial His- 
torian of England, allow her very little influence. On 
the other hand, Kobertson, the historian of Charles V., 
Biot, an elaborate French author, who got a gold medal 
from the French Academy of Moral and Polemical Science 
for his work De V Abolition de V E sclavage Ancien en Occi- 
dent, and the Rev. Churchill Babington, of St. John's 
College, Cambridge, who got the Hulsean prize for the 
year 1845, for an essay on the same subject — all these and 
others ascribe the greatest influence to Christianity as 
the only power which has lasted long enough, or been uni- 
versal enough, or unmixed and constant enough, to accom- 
plish such a task. 

But it is curious, indeed, as a question of historical 
philosophy, to see how exceedingly gradual was the pro- 
cess by which Christianity operated in the abolition of 
slavery. Not only Guizot, on the one side, declares that 
"slavery subsisted a long time in the bosom of Christian 
society without any great horror or irritation being ex- 
pressed against it," but Biot, on the other side, tells us that 
no "Christian writers of the 'first three centuries speak of 
the abolition of slavery as a consequence of Christianity." 
And Babington, after quoting many passages from Basil, 
Chrysostom, Jerome and other early fathers, remarks, 
"Not one of these writers even hints that slavery is im- 
proper or unlawful." This same writer also refers to the 
fact that "Christianity has, for eighteen centuries, been 
operating upon European servitude." He also remarks, 
"Christianity has been constantly producing such an 
effect upon society that when one thousand years had 
passed away, strict personal slavery had, in most parts of 
Europe, begun to disappear." * 

* See article on the "Christian Doctrine of Human Rights and 
Slavery," which I published in March, 1849, in the Southern Pres- 
byterian Review (Vol. II., pp. 582-583). 



162 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



Xow, it is true, and will forever remain true, that our 
<l Southern slavery was just a grand civilizing and Chris- 
tianizing school, providentially prepared to train thou- 
sands of negro slaves, brought hither from Africa by 
other people against our protest, some two hundred years 
ago. Never was any statement more absurdly false than 
that slavery degraded the negroes of the South from a 
higher to a lower position. The truth is, that all the good 
there ever was arising out of the presence of these people 
in this country was due to the fact that, coming hither as 
slaves, they were permitted to remain a long time at the 
school of slavery, to receive there a most valuable educa- 
tion. All this is true, and the Southern people and their 
children's children owe it to themselves and to their fore- 
fathers, to maintain forever these truths against all oppo- 
nents. The negroes were brought to us as naked savages ; 
many of them, perhaps most of them, had been slaves in 
their own country ; of the rest, some had been cannibals. 
They were just the same sort of people with which mis- 
sionaries to Africa now make us familiar in their letters. 
Whenever necessary, as in the case of cannibals and other 
ferocious negroes, the discipline of the school which 
slavery kept was severe. They had to be subjugated by 
their masters, or their presence would have been intoler- 
able. But, for the most part, these poor Africans, two 
hundred years ago, were, as they are now, as reported by 
missionaries, a gentle, docile people. It followed that the 
discipline of the school had no need to be otherwise than 
kind and gentle. Accordingly, down to the period of 
emancipation, the relation betwixt master and slave in 
these Southern States was, on both sides, generally a 
kindly one. This no one can deny who was acquainted 
with the system. There were cruel masters, as there were 
cruel fathers and cruel husbands. To speak of no higher 
motives which every slaveholder warmly cherished (or 
else he incurred inevitably shame and dishonor from his 
neighbors), the master knew that his slave was worth and 
cost money. The master of a horse that has cost him 
much will not treat him cruelly unless more of a brute 
than the very horse. How could the master of a slave so 
far forget his own interest as to be cruel to his slave unless 



WHAT FOLLOWED. 



163 



he was a brute himself ? In the great and good school of 
slavery, then, onr slaves were receiving the most needful 
and valuable education for this life, and very many of 
them for the life to come. The two races were steadily 
and constantly marching onwards and upwards together. 
Hence, when emancipation was suddenly forced upon us, 
it found a good many pupils in the school of slavery who 
were ready to be graduated, while it found all of them 
considerably educated. One hundred years more of the 
school of slavery might have fitted them all for gradua- 
tion. History tells us that European Christianity took 
eighteen centuries to turn slaves into free men. North- 
ern statesmanship gave us the palm. Its decree was that 
our school of slavery, in these Southern States, had re- 
quired only two hundred years to fit naked African sav- 
ages for the American ballot, and to be the statesmen and 
the senators, and, if need be, the presidents of this great 
republic. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Five Years' Work as a Missionary to the Negroes 
in Charleston. 
1847-1851. 

HAVING thus been prevented from returning to my 
Armenian work, my resolution was at length 
taken to devote myself to the religious instruction of the 
negroes in Charleston. 

But what I proposed to begin appeared to very many 
of the citizens of Charleston a dangerous project. The 
idea of building a church where negroes were to assemble 
for worship, separate from the whites, even though the 
minister was to be a white man, and the Sunday-school 
teachers all white gentlemen and ladies, was not only novel, 
but, to many persons, alarming. And yet the religious 
instruction of the eight thousand colored communicants 
was, by far the larger part of it, actually carried on sep- 
arately from the whites, and, what was more, the real 
teachers were colored men. In the Methodist churches 
the whole body of the negroes, say five thousand in num- 
ber, were divided into classes, and the leaders of these 
classes were all negroes. The same system was, more or 
less, fully carried out in all the other churches. The white 
pastors could not have much oversight of all these classes, 
or even of all these class-leaders. What was in their 
power these white ministers performed, but,necessarily,it 
amounted to but little. I proposed to make a small be- 
ginning of a better plan, considering the interest both of 
black people and of white ones. One argument which I 
used against the prevailing system was that it made no 
adequate provision for seating even eight thousand com- 
municants. The galleries of the white churches could not 
contain more than one-fourth of their number, so that the 
idea of adequate oversight of the colored portion of their 
flocks, by the white pastors, was really absurd. So there 



FIVE YEARS^ WORK AMONG THE NEGROES. 165 

was a call for the beginning of a better system. Yet it 
was insisted by my opponents that there was adequate 
room, and my friend, Dr. Whitef oord Smith, one of the 
Methodist pastors, and a most eloquent and popular and 
worthy one, actually took me with him to measure one of 
their galleries, and convince me of my error. But I think 
the actual measurement rather convinced him that he was 
wrong. 

But the real ground of the opposition which I encoun- 
tered on the part of many in the Charleston community, 
had a history which I have already given, and to which 
I must now again allude. Twenty-five years previously a 
plot had been discovered among the negroes for a murder- 
ous insurrection against the white people. Many negroes 
were arrested and tried, but most of them being found in- 
nocent, were released, yet some thirty-five or forty of 
them were executed. Of these, I myself, when a boy 
eleven years old, saw twenty-two hanged on one gallows. 
A very profound impression was made by these occur- 
rences upon both the white and black population of the 
city. Unfortunately, whether justly or not, a separate col- 
ored church, which had existed some years, with a most 
excellent negro man for its minister, was accused of some 
complicity in the plot. The storm that arose wrecked the 
church. He moved to Philadelphia, and he became sub- 
sequently a bishop in some negro denomination, and the 
members of his Charleston church and congregation were 
all glad to house themselves from the tempest in the col- 
ored membership of the different white churches. The 
consequence of all these events was that the idea of a 
separate church for negroes, which was the plan proposed, 
could not be thought of by hundreds of people in Charles- 
ton without horror. But there were many intelligent, 
sober-minded, Christian men and women who saw noth- 
ing in my plan but what promised to be useful in the 
highest degree, and they gave me their earnest support. 
Dr. Smyth, pastor of the Second church, seconded me 
very earnestly; so did all my brothers, and the four of 
them agreed to supply my support. My father also gave 
me his approbation and countenance. Many leading 
members of the Second church strongly favored what I 



166 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



proposed, after hearing a discourse wherein I publicly 
set forth my views and desires. Charleston Presbytery 
also declared its approval of my plan. The sermon al- 
luded to was preached on the 9th of May, 1847, and was 
afterwards published, with an appendix containing the 
resolutions that were offered by the Hon. Francis H. El- 
more and adopted by the congregation. The text of the 
sermon was, "The poor have the gospel preached to them." 
In opening his discourse, the preacher referred to his hav- 
ing been a missionary for over twelve years to the Arme- 
nians, in Smyrna, Constantinople and Asia Minor, and 
to his transfer now being effected to a domestic mission- 
ary work in this city. Various considerations had oper- 
ated to induce his consent to this transfer. One was that 
the impaired condition of his eyesight unfitted him for 
further labors as a translator in that arid climate and 
under that brilliant sky. Another was that, when he went 
forth, it was with the sympathy and support of the Pres- 
byterian Church, and of the Southern churches in partic- 
ular ; but this sympathy and support, naturally of great 
value to him, had long been withdrawn, and he had felt 
himself cut off and isolated. Strong and agitating influ- 
ences meanwhile had been at work, drawing him centre- 
wards, and leading him to feel that it was time for him 
to cast in his lot with his own people. Still another was 
the natural obligation which he felt, and had always felt, 
to do something for the religious instruction of the igno- 
rant colored people of his native city, Charleston. 
The points discussed in the sermon were — 

I. The inquiry who, expressly and particularly, are the 
poor of the city of Charleston ; 

II. The fact that the gospel is not adequately preached 
to them ; and 

III. The obligation and expediency of making a fuller 
provision for their spiritual wants. 

The inquiry, "Who are our poor ?" is answered in the 
following terms : "The poor of this city are easily dis- 
tinguishable. They are a class separated from ourselves 
by their color, their position in society, their relation to 
our families, their national origin, and their moral, intel- 
lectual and physical condition. Nowhere are the poor 



FIVE YEARS' WOEK AMOKG THE NEGROES. 167 

more distinctly marked out than our poor; and yet, 
strange to say, nowhere are the poor so closely and inti- 
mately connected with the higher classes as are our poor 
with us. They belong to us. We also belong to them. 
They are divided out among us and mingled up with us, 
and we with them in a thousand ways. They live with 
us, eating from the same store-houses, drinking from the 
same fountains, dwelling in the same enclosures, forming 
parts of the same families. Our mothers confide us, 
when infants, to their arms, and sometimes to the very 
milk of their breasts. Their children are, to some extent, 
unavoidably the playmates of our childhood — grow up 
with us under the same roof — sometimes pass through all 
the changes of life with us, and then, either they stand 
weeping by our bedside, or else we drop a tributary tear 
by theirs, when death comes to close the long connection 
and to separate the good master and his good servant. 

"Such, my friends, are those whom we consider the 
poor of this city. There they are — behold them. See 
them all around you, in these streets, in all these dwellings ; 
a race distinct from us, yet closely united to us ; brought 
in God's mysterious providence from a foreign land, and 
placed under our care, and made members of our house- 
holds. They fill the humblest places of our state of so- 
ciety ; they serve us ; they give us their strength, yet they 
are not more truly ours than we are truly theirs. They 
are our poor — our poor brethren; children of our God 
and Father ; dear to our Saviour ; to the like of whom he 
preached ; for the like of whom he died, and to the least 
of whom every act of Christian compassion and kindness 
which we show he will consider as shown also to him- 
self." 

In the second place, the inadequacy of preaching 
amongst us for the poor was conclusively proved by ap- 
pealing to facts. The inadequacy of the provisions made 
consisted chiefly in two things, first, a want of sufficient 
church accommodations, and, second, a want of suitable 
instruction — instruction adapted to the condition and 
capacity of the negro. On this point it will not be neces- 
sary to quote from the sermon, as the statements pre- 
viously made in this chapter are sufficient. 



168 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



In the third place, the obligation and expediency of 
preaching the gospel to the poor was enforced by such con- 
siderations as these : God has committed the gospel to us 
as Christians, that we may preach it to all men, including 
the poor ; the grand distinction of the gospel is that it is 
designed especially for the poor, the destitute, the miser- 
able and wretched, the ignorant and the perishing; the 
inestimable value of these classes, as immortal beings; 
the faithful preaching of the gospel to our poor will be 
followed by great advantages to our own children, and, 
therefore, it is our bounden duty to give them the 
gospel. 

In the very first of the thirty-six volumes of the South- 
ern Presbyterian Review, which had, just about this time, 
begun to be published, there appeared (Vol. II., p. 137) 
from Dr. Thornwell's pen a review of this sermon. He 
expressed his deliberate judgment on various grounds, 
stated by him, that the plan of separate congrega- 
tions is the only plan which promises any adequate or 
efficient provision for the religious instruction of our 
slaves. They must not forsake the assembling of them- 
selves together; they must attend upon the ministry of 
the gospel. But the duty of public worship cannot be 
discharged by them, nor the advantages of public instruc- 
tion received, as long as they are doomed to scanty and 
contracted sections of our church edifices, and compelled 
to listen to ministrations which presuppose, for the most 
part, a preliminary knowledge which they do not and 
cannot possess. The same gospel must be differently dis- 
pensed, in order to have its full measure of success upon 
men so diverse in capacities and attainments as the two 
races amongst us. 

"There is another point of view," said Dr. Thornwell, 
"in which the expediency of giving them preachers pe- 
culiarly devoted to themselves may be strikingly ex- 
hibited. If we do not furnish them with men qualified to 
teach them, they will provide themselves with others, who 
will pander to their tastes, and develop the religious ele- 
ment of their nature in forms, it may be, incompatible 
with their own improvement, and the interests of their 
masters. ~No human laws and no human vigilance can 



169 



prevent them from assembling for the purpose of worship. 
Man is essentially a religions creature, and religion is 
essentially a social quality. As in the days of the Empire, 
neither imperial laws nor imperial cruelty cotild pnt an 
effectual interdict npon the occasional and solemn convo- 
cations of the primitive Christians, so it will be with the 
negroes amongst ns. They must gratify the religions 
yearnings of their souls : and to attempt to restrain them 
in the exercise of what they feel to be a high, holy and 
imperative duty, will appear to them as 'tyranny from v 
policy, which will fully justify rebellion from principle/ 
Gratuitous abridgments of the liberty of worship, arm 
the strongest feelings of their nature against the authority 
of their master. Our own security is best consulted, not 
by violent resistance to any original impulse of the heart, 
not bvjempting to extirpate or destroy it, but by giving 
it a wise direction and turning it into safe and salutary 
channels. Separate congregations, therefore, they will 
have. If our laws and the public sentiment of the com- 
munity tolerate them, they will be open, public, responsi- 
ble. If our laws prohibit them, they will be secret, fanat- 
ical, dangerous. Teachers they will have. If we supply 
them, they will be teachers indeed, instructing them in the 
mysteries of heaven, and conducting them in the paths 
of holiness, and obedience, and peace. If they are com- 
pelled surreptitiously to supply themselves, they will heap 
to themselves teachers after their own lusts, who will give 
them fanaticism for piety, excitement for devotion, and 
enthusiasm for faith. Is it not safer to gratify the relig- 
ious impulses of their nature by an adequate provision on 
our part, which will at once promote their improvement 
and league their purest and noblest affections on the side 
of their masters \ To give them the means of worship- 
ping God, to give them preachers who shall manifest an 
earnest and anxious solicitude for the salvation of their 
souls; to give them houses in which they can meet for 
prayer and praise and the word of exhortation ; to dis- 
play the same care for their eternal and spiritual interests 
which we are accustomed to cherish for their health, food 
and raiment, would be an exhibition of Christian sym- 
pathy, on our part, which could not fail to reach the 



AXD TIMES, 



hearts of a race proverbially grateful, and sweeten the 
intercourse betwixt the master and his slave." 

It was ordered, in the providence of God, that very 
soon after this Presbyterian movement, a verv similar, 
bnt entirely independent one, was commenced in the Epis- 
copal Church. The Diocesan Convention of South Car- 

^ olina, meeting in St. Michael's church, appointed the 
Rev. Paul Trapier to gather a congregation of negroes, to 
be under his individual pastoral instruction and care, 
with some white assistance. I happened to be present, as 
a spectator, in the gallery of the church, when the conven- 
tion took np this matter, and I was greatly cheered by the 
hearty manner in which that eminent body dealt with 
ihis •:. My impression is that not a single voice 

was raised in opposition. Many of the lay members of 
that body were large slaveholders themselves. There 
were also quite a number of other lay members of the 
Episcopal C hurch who were quite wide awake to the duty 
of giving sound religious instruction to our negroes. I 
recall the names of two young men, Russell Middleton. 
afterwards President of Charleston College, and Henry 
D. Lesesne, then a student in the law office of James L. 
Petigru, who afterwards was well known as Chancellor 
Lesesne. These young gentlemen were full of zeal on 
the subject of the white man's duty of directly interesting 
his negro slave in religion. Edward McCrady, Esq.. 
and C. G. Memminger, Esq., both eminent lawyers of the 
Episcopal Church, were also very hearty in their appro- 
bation of this work. 

The Eev. Mr. Trapier, at the request of the committee 
appointed by the Diocesan Convention, preached a ser- 
mon, on Sundays in July, in several of the Protestant 

^ Episcopal churches, and this sermon was published widely 
in the community. His text was taken from Colossians 
iv. 1, "Masters, give unto your servants that which is 
just and equal, knowing that ye also have a master in 
heaven." The preacher then urges the duty of the relig- 
ious training of our servants by the example of Abra- 
ham ; by precepts, both from the Old and the ^ ew Testa- 
ments ; by an appeal to humanity, and a sense of "such 
favors as the humblest may confer upon the loftiest" 



FIVE YEARS' WORK AMONG THE NEGROES. 171 

He then proceeds to set forth the real state of the case. 
"There are, according to the census of 1840, about twenty 
thousand slaves in our city and its suburbs, and not more 
than one thousand of these are in any way connected with 
our six Episcopal churches ; nor in all the other places of 
worship, and of all denominations, it is estimated that 
more than five thousand can be accommodated. This 
leaves an appalling residue of fourteen thousand. Where 
are they? And what is becoming of them? They are 
human beings, with thoughts and feelings of their own. 
Their hearts are, in common with those of all the rest of 
mankind, prone to sin and averse from God and holiness. 
Do you imagine that, left to themselves, they will not go 
on from bad to worse, catching and communicating con- 
tagion by association ? Or, do you fancy that they are to 
be kept from doing so by the strong arm of domestic dis- 
cipline, or detected and punished by the vigilance of mu- 
nicipal agency ? Nay, brethren ! it is notorious that such 
expedients, however useful and indispensable, do not, and 
cannot, effect a cure of this or any other moral disease; 
nor even arrest its progress ; nor reach the hiding-places 
of its real origin. For these are in the heart ; and it is 
because our servants are not Christians that so many of 
them are given to vices and guilty of offences ruinous to 
themselves, hurtful to their fellows, injurious to us, and 
pestilential to our whole community. . . . Suffer me, 
nevertheless, to inquire of you again, Are you doing what 
you ought and may for their souls ? . . . For the four- 
teen thousand not connected efficiently with any denomi- 
nation of Christians, . . . as to any influence upon 
them for spiritual good, I ask again, Where are they? 
'Sitting in darkness and the shadow of death/ 'without 
Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, 
strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope, and 
without God in the world.' (Ephesians ii. 12.) The 
heathen in our midst, as they have been truly named, nay, 
in one respect, worse off than heathen elsewhere — these at 
our doors are exposed to the evils of civilization, and its 
vices are corrupting them; while of its moral benefits 
scarcely a knowledge have they, unless by the contrast of 
their own deprivation and consequent spiritual wretched- 
ness." 



172 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



Mr. Trapier, in the second place, then alludes to "the 
action of the late convention "by which a committee was 
appointed, not to consider and report, but to make ar- 
rangements for establishing and keeping up the congre- 
gation proposed." He states also that "our every step 
hitherto has been under the tacit sanction and with the 
approval, expressed or implied, by those who are over us 
in church and State." . . . "The convention, by its 
vote electing the committee, has lent its countenance; 
and our bishop, who was not present then, has since sig- 
nified to us, in writing, his good wishes, and bidden us 
Godspeed." 

In the third place, Mr. Trapier again recurs to the 
question, "What shall we do for our servants ?" and he 
proceeds to set forth the plan of his committee which in 
every essential particular is the same proposed by the 
Presbyterians. 

But while the Episcopal Church seemed to be quite 
united in approving separate religious worship and public 
instruction for the negroes, to be directly afforded them 
by a white minister and other white teachers, it soon be- 
gan to be clear that I would meet with opposition from 
Presbyterians. A prominent lawyer of Charleston was 
afterwards judge of the United States District Court, 
and subsequently Governor of the State of South Carolina 
during the war, assailed me by name in the Charleston, 
Mercury, then the leading political paper of South Caro- 
lina. He was an old school-mate of mine in our boyish 
days. He signed himself "Many Citizens," and por- 
trayed in dark colors the dangerous character of my move- 
ment. This gentleman was a member of the First Pres- 
byterian church, commonly called the Scotch Church, 
and it was well understood generally that the pastor of 
that church earnestly supported him. "Many Citizens" 
wrote two articles in the Mercury before I felt called on 
to reply. Then a third communication from him ap- 
peared. My second followed immediately, and the discus- 
sion was closed by the editor. It had excited very great 
interest. "Many Citizens" sought to arouse the fears of 
a community which had not forgotten the events of 1822 ; 
but he could not prevail against the calm and sober argu- 



FIVE YEARS'' WORK AMONG THE NEGROES. 173 

ments that were brought forward on the other side. This 
controversy is now out of date, and I need not repeat here 
any of its details. 

By reason of this controversy, the Presbyterian move- 
ment was somewhat retarded ; bnt the Episcopalians had 
moved quietly on, and had begun the erection of their 
church building. While our walls were just coming out 
of the ground theirs had got to be some ten feet high, 
when a mob of excited people assembled one night and 
were about to pull them all down. Several influential 
citizens, jealous for the honor of their city, appeared in 
time to persuade the multitude to desist, promising that 
they would call a public meeting to test the sense of the 
community on the question. This meeting appointed a 
committee of fifty, of which Daniel Ravenel, Sr., was the 
chairman, to inquire into the matter. This committee 
corresponded with intelligent gentlemen all over the 
South, to collect information which should lead the city 
to a wise decision. Then another public meeting was 
called, and the City Hall was filled with an eager throng 
of leading men. The report of the committee of fifty was 
read, decidedly favoring the movement as both wise and 
good. The opposition was heard, first, through their 
leader. I cannot recall his name, but my recollection is 
that he was no citizen of Charleston, a comparative 
stranger amongst us, and a man of not very good charac- 
ter. Then the Hon. Francis H. Elmore, who had been 
elected to fill out the unexpired term in the United States 
Senate, of the lamented Calhoun, moved the adoption of 
the report in a very eloquent speech. James L. Peti- 
gru, then, in many respects, the topmost citizen of 
Charleston, rose to second it. Mr. Elmore was a member 
of the congregation of the Second Presbyterian church, 
and his wife was a professing member. He had favored 
my project strongly from the very beginning, and I had 
supposed, of course, he would speak; but the speech of 
Mr. Petigru had not been counted on. It was such a 
speech as is not often heard. I wish I could recall and 
report it. The assembly was thrilled as this great citizen 
poured forth his feelings. But when he came to speak 
on the "liberty of teaching" what was true and good to 



174 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



all men, his big heart swelled with emotion, and so did 
those of his hearers. All I remember is "the liberty of 
teaching ! why, sirs, that was what brought many of our 
fathers here." Petigru was a Huguenot. The assem- 
bly understood his allusion. !Not many words were 
required to be added. The question was settled in 
Charleston for all time. The nightmare, which had op- 
pressed the mind and heart of the city for twenty-five 
years, vanished. 

My first place for preaching to the negroes was in the 
basement of the lecture-room of the Second Presbyterian 
church, in Society street. We had a Sunday-school of 
white teachers, male and female, and a large number of 
negro children attended, with some adults, and I had a 
good congregation, after the Sunday-school of grown peo- 
ple, to hear my sermon. I also had prayer-meetings at 
different places, and I had a class of male church mem- 
bers for special instruction. The church in Anson street 
was duly finished and occupied, after being fully paid 
for and solemnly dedicated, with a large congregation of 
the foremost citizens of Charleston being present. Dr. 
Thornwell prepared and delivered a special sermon, at 
my request, suitable to the occasion. It was afterwards 
published, and distributed widely. The building was 
calculated to hold several hundred people, with seats for 
a few whites ; the negroes sat in front of the preacher 
from the pulpit to the door, and the seats of the white 
people were on the right and left side of it, with separate 
entrances for each class. Rev. Mr. Trapier's church was 
built somewhere in Beauf ain street, and both these efforts 
were successfully carried on. In my case, after five years' 
labor, the condition of my eyes compelled me to retire, 
and Dr. Girardeau became my successor. Under his 
faithful and earnest preaching many believers were added 
to the church. His labors were so much blessed that the 
first church building in Anson street became too small for 
the congregation, and had to give place to the largest 
church edifice in Charleston. It was erected in Boundary 
or Calhoun street, very near Meeting street. This im- 
mense building, costing twenty-five thousand dollars, was 
all paid for by the white citizens of Charleston, as an ex- 



FIVE YEARS' WORK AMONG THE NEGROES. 175 



pression of their interest in the religions welfare of the 
colored people. The negroes named it Zion. The lower 
story was devoted to the uses of the Sunday-school and 
session, and the meetings for public services were held 
in the wide area of the upper story. The main floor was 
occupied by negroes, for whom the preaching was chiefly 
designed; but there were galleries on three sides facing 
the pulpit for the white people. Their preacher had a 
golden mouth, as well as Chrysostom. He was raised 
amongst the negroes of the low country, knew them well, 
loved them much, and was much loved by them, and felt 
from a child a desire to preach to them. His congrega- 
tion of blacks was generally not less than one thousand, 
while a good many white people were present in the gal- 
leries every Sunday afternoon. That colored congrega- 
tion needed no music from an organ. Their singing of 
God's praises was magnificent, and suited well the earn- 
est preaching of the gospel by their minister. He con- 
tinued his labors in that pulpit till called to the army dur- 
ing the latter part of our four years' war, when he was 
taken prisoner, sent to Johnson's Island, where he 
preached to his brother officers, and held a Bible-class for 
some who were ministers, whom I have heard speak of 
the lessons they learned there from his lips. I have no 
doubt that the influence of his apostlic instructions to 
thousands and thousands of negroes who frequented his 
ministry during those ten years in Zion church, had much i 
to do with the quiet, peaceable and submissive behavior 
of the colored people in Charleston while the war went on, 
just as I am sure the same effect was produced among the 
slave population all over the South, by the sound religious 
instructions they had been receiving, publicly and pri- 
vately, for many years before the war. 

The period at which Dr. Girardeau suspended his 
labors among the negroes was one of great discouragement 
and depression in the whole Southern country. It was 
becoming more and more evident that the North was mak- 
ing war upon us, to a great extent, on account of the 
negro. The flower of our youth were in the army. They 
were being made a sacrifice to our slaves. The hearts of 
our people went out to our soldiers. The missionary loved 



176 



MY LIFE AXD TIDIES. 



his negro nock ; but he was a white man. and he could nor 
but sympathize strongly with his young countrymen who 
were pouring out their blood in the patriotic struggle. 
He took no counsel with me in deciding that it was time 
for him to give his services to our wounded and dying 
soldiers. But he gave me thanks afterwards, when I 
told him he was doing right. On his return, after the 
war, his white brethren, in their dire distress, stood in 
great need of consolation and instruction from him. 
They earnestly called for all his time and strength, but 
he could not bear to desert the negro. Xot being able my- 
self to state precisely what arrangements were finally 
reached, so that he might hearken, in part, to the call of 
his white brethren, and yet continue his work among the 
negroes, I addressed him in this month of February, 
1897, some inquiries, and I here append his answer in his 
own words : 

My pastoral relation to the Zion church (colored and white) was 
never dissolved (formally) ; but circumstances made it impractica- 
ble for me to serve the colored flock in that relation, just after the 
war. To the Presbyterian congregations of Charleston I preached 
for awhile at their request, and with Dr. Smyth's consent, in the 
pulpit of the Second Presbyterian Church. When Dr. Smyth inti- 
mated his desire to return from Summerton, where he had been a 
refugee during the war, to his church in Charleston, I at once with- 
drew with the white part of the Zion church, and such of the colored 
members as worshipped with us in the Second Church, to the Glebe 
Street Church building, which we borrowed from that church organ- 
ization — which shortly afterwards united with the Zion Church 
under the style and title of the latter. The Gleoe Street Church teas 
aosoroed into the Zion Church. It was not a union of coordinates 
under a new name. Hence the name of the united church was, Zion 
Church worshipping in Glebe street. 

Your special point of inquiry is, how I came to be separated from 
the colored flock in Calhoun street, to which I had continued to 
minister while preaching to the white charge in Glebe street. By 
what ecclesiastical action did it take place? By the action of the 
General Assembly in Columbus, Miss., in 1874. 

In the fall of 1873 the Synod of South Carolina, meeting in Co- 
lumbia, had a warm discussion of the question of admitting negro 
members into our church — Mr. Baxter, of Xewberry, the chief 
speaker against, and the writer in favor. The story is interesting, 
but too long for me to recite in writing. I never, from the begin- 



FIVE YEARS'" WOEK AMONG THE NEGROES. 



177 



ning, was in favor of separating the two races, of cutting off — as I 
expressed it — the negro race from the white, like casting loose a 
tow-boat from a great steamship in the middle of a stormy ocean. 
But the reply was, the Constitution, the Constitution ! If we admit 
the negro, we must concede him all the rights of membership, official 
as well as others. Very well, said I, finally, have your way. I with- 
draw my opposition. Try the experiment. Experience may decide 
the matter. And then what ? Why, the Synod of South Carolina de- 
cided to overture the Assembly in favor of organic separation be- 
tween whites and blacks in the church, and the establishment of an 
independent African Presbyterian church. In that way the subject 
came up before the Assembly of 1874. Further, the Synod of Mis- 
sissippi, led by Dr. B. M. Palmer, submitted a similar overture, 
elaborately drawn, and with the usual eloquence and power of the 
author. This strongly reinforced the South Carolina overture. The 
Committee of Bills and Overtures reported favorably to these over- 
tures, and the Assembly voted that way unanimously, excepting one 
vote — that of the writer. 

The issue was, retention of the colored people in our church or 
organic separation from them. I did not theoretically approve of 
separation, but, as the whole church was going that way, I practi- 
cally went with it, but under protest. 

Now, the circumstances are such that, like yourself, I favor an 
Independent African Presbyterian Church; and hence my course in 
regard to the case of Reuben James, lately before our Presbytery and 
the Assembly. Theoretically, I still think the policy of retention 
the better one; but practically, separation now seems a necessity. 
But I cannot write as I wish. I grow tired and sick. 

That Assembly effected an organic separation between the two 
races ecclesiastically, so that the colored, if it desired to do so, 
could withdraw from any formal relation to the white. Acting upon 
this procedure of the General Assembly, I convened the colored con- 
gregation, explained the situation to them, and gave them the 
liberty, if they pleased, to set up for themselves. Most of the old 
people strenuously opposed the separation, but Young Africa was 
in favor of it. The majority favored the separation, and among 
them, I remember, he who had always striven to be in the matter of 
the singing aut Caesar aut nullus. That was how the breach oc- 
curred. The colored people voted for it, and I gave them the road. 
I would like to discuss this whole matter with you. It is very in- 
teresting to me. But much writing sickens me. Hence I cannot 
write you as fully as I would like to do. 

With sympathy and earnest prayer for you, 

Affectionately yours, Jxo. L. Girardeau. 



178 



MY LIFE A^D TOIES. 



I turn back now to give some account of the dedication 
of the church in Anson street. 

The church building in Anson street, which was erected 
for the special religious instruction of negroes separately, 
was dedicated on Sabbath evening, 26th day of May, 1850, 
Dr. Thornwell, at my request, preaching the sermon. 
The enterprise had encountered very serious difficulties. 
Some good men had their fears about it. Some bad men 
bitterly opposed it. The whole city had been excited. 
More than once in its history, there had been peculiar 
reasons for excitement and apprehension. Meanwhile, 
- the whole Southern country, placed under the ban of the 
civilized world, had been stung to madness by unjust re- 
proaches against our "cruelty and inhumanity" as slave- 
holders. Here was a church built by Christian slave- 
holders for the religious benefit of the slaves. It was felt 
to be suitable that, in opening this house for this specific 
use, they should set their views before the other Christian 
slaveholders of the South. It was possible that, in this 
way, we might stimulate their faithfulness and diligence 
in the discharge of the duties which spring from the rela- 
tion of masters and servants. It was also possible that we 
might contribute somewhat to the correction of those 
world-wide errors which prevailed as to the true character 
of slavery, as it existed amongst us. Accordingly, the 
congregation that assembled to take part in the dedication 
of the house to the worship of God by negroes, was com- 
posed exclusively of white people. It was a dedication 
by the masters of the slaves. It was an act of intelligent 
Christian citizens, whom the world was charging with the 
dreadful sin of slaveholding. Dr. Thornwell, therefore, 
took his text from Colossians iv. 1., "Masters, give unto 
your servants that which is just and equal, knowing that 
ye also have a master in heaven," and so, we may say, the 
subject of his sermon was the Christian doctrine of 
slavery. I make bold to say that the reader has never 
read a clearer, fairer, stronger, more satisfactory presen- 
tation of this subject. 

The preacher, after remarking that we had been "de- 
nounced with every epithet of vituperation and abuse, as 
conspirators against the dignity of man, traitors to our 



five years' work among the negroes. 179 



race, and rebels against God/' and, after exhorting to 
''maintain the moderation and dignity which become us," 
opened his discourse with the observation, "God has not 
permitted such a remarkable phenomenon as the unanim- 
ity of the civilized world in its execration of slavery to 
take place without design. This great battle with the 
abolitionists has not been fought in vain. The muster of 
such immense forces, the fury of bitterness of the conflict, 
the disparity in resources of the parties in the war, and 
the conspicuousness — the unexampled conspicuousness of 
the event — have all been ordered for wise and beneficent 
results; and when the smoke shall have rolled away, it 
will be seen that a real progress has been made in the 
practical solution of the problems which produced the 
collision." 

"What disasters," he continued, "we must pass through 
before the nations can be taught the lessons of providence, 
what horrors are to be experienced, no human sagacity can 
foresee. But that this world is now the theatre of an ex- 
traordinary conflict of great principles, that the founda- 
tions of society are about to be explored to their depths, 
and the sources of social and political prosperity laid 
bare ; that the questions in dispute involve all that is 
dear and precious to man on earth, the most superficial 
observer cannot fail to perceive. Experiment after ex- 
periment may be made, disaster succeed disaster, in 
carrying out the principles of an atheistic philosophy, 
until the nations, wearied and heart-sickened with 
changes without improvement, shall open their eyes to 
the real causes of their calamities. God will vindicate 
the appointments of his providence ; and, if our institu- 
tions are indeed consistent with righteousness and truth, 
we can calmly afford to bide our time. If our principles 
are true, the world must come to them. It is not the nar- 
row question of abolitionism or of slavery, not simply 
whether we shall emancipate our negroes or not ; the real 
question is, the relations of man to society, of States to 
the individual, and of the individual to States, a question 
as broad as the interests of the human race. These are the 
mighty questions which are shaking thrones to their 
centres, upheaving the masses like an earthquake, and 



180 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



rocking the solid pillars of this Union. The parties in 
this conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders ; 
they are Atheists, Socialists, Commnnists, Eed Repub- 
licans, J acobins on the one side, and the friends of order 
and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the 
world is the battle-ground, Christianity and atheism the 
combatants, and the progress of humanity the stake. One 
party seems to regard society, with all its complicated in- 
terests, its divisions and subdivisions, as the machinery 
of man, which, as it has been invented and arranged by 
his ingenuity and skill, may be taken to pieces, recon- 
structed, altered or repaired, as experience shall indicate 
defects or confusion in the original plan. The other party 
beholds in it the ordinance of God, and contemplates 'this 
little scene of human life' as placed in the middle of a 
scheme, whose beginnings must be traced to the unfath- 
omable depths of the past, and whose development and 
completion must be sought in the still more unfathomable 
depths of the future — a scheme, as Butler expresses it, 
mot fixed, but progressive, every way incomprehensible,' 
in which, consequently, irregularity is the confession of 
our ignorance, disorder the proof of our blindness, and 
with which it is as awful temerity to tamper as to sport 
with the name of God." 

Dr. Thornwell continues, "The part, accordingly, which 
is assigned to us in the tumult of the age, is the mainte- 
nance of the principles upon which the security of social 
order and the development of humanity depends, in their 
application to the distinctive institutions which have 
provoked upon us the malediction of the world. The 
apostle briefly sums up all that is incumbent, at the pres- 
ent crisis, upon the slaveholders of the South, in the preg- 
nant text, "Masters, give unto your servants that which is 
just and equal, knowing that ye also have a master in 
heaven." 

It is not my purpose to present the whole of this mag- 
nificent discourse, but only its chief parts, yet I shall en- 
deavor not to break the continuity of Dr. Thornwell' s 
thought. He points out how manifestly it is slaves, not 
mere servants, whom the apostle is addressing. Finding 
it impossible to deny that slavery is an element of society. 



FIVE YEARS' WORK AMONG THE NEGROES. 181 

is sanctioned by Christ and his apostles, our enemies ad- 
mit that the letter of the Scriptures is in our favor, but 
that their spirit is against us. He proceeds to expose 
the confusion of ideas from which this distinction be- 
tween the letter and the spirit of the gospel has arisen. 
This confusion has arisen, he says, from a two-fold mis- 
apprehension : one, in relation to the nature of the 
slavery tolerated in the letter of the Scriptures, and the 
other in relation to the spirit of Christianity itself. 

1. It is common to describe the slavery which the letter 
of the Scriptures tolerates, as the property of man in man, 
as the destruction of all human and personal rights, the 
absorption of the humanity of one individual into the 
will and power of another. "The very idea of a slave," 
says Dr. Channing, "is that he belongs to another ; he is 
bound to live and labor for another, to be another's in- 
strument, and to make another's will his habitual law, 
however adverse to his own." "We have thus," says he 
in another place, "established the reality and sacredness 
of human rights, and that slavery is an infraction of these, 
it is too plain to need any labored proof. Slavery violates 
not one, but all, and violates them not incidentally, but 
necessarily, systematically, from its very nature." In 
other words, in every system of slavery, from the opera- 
tion of its inherent and essential principles, the slave 
ceases to be a person, a man, and becomes a mere instru- 
ment or thing. Dr. Channing does not charge this result 
upon the relation as it obtains under particular codes or 
at particular times or in particular places. He says, dis- 
tinctly and emphatically, that it violates all human rights, 
not incidentally, but necessarily, systematically, from its 
very nature. It belongs to the very essence of slavery to 
divest its victims of humanity. 

"Slavery," says Professor Whewell, "is contrary to the 
fundamental principles of morality. It neglects the great 
primary distinction of Persons and Things, converting a 
person into a thing, an object merely passive, without any 
recognized attributes of human nature. A slave is, in the 
eye of the State which stamps him with that character, 
not acknowledged as a man. His pleasures and pains, his 
wishes and desires, his needs and springs of action, his 



182 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



thoughts and feelings, are of no value whatever in the eye 
of the community. He is reduced to the level of the 
brutes. Even his crimes, as we have said, are not ac- 
knowledged as wrongs, lest it should be supposed that, as 
he may do a wrong, he may suffer one. And as there are 
for him no wrongs, because there are no rights, so there 
is for him nothing morally right, that is, as we have seen, 
nothing conformable to the Supreme Eule of Human 
Nature ; for the Supreme Eule of his condition is the will 
of his master. He is thus divested of his moral nature, 
which is contrary to the great principle we have already 
laid down: that all men are moral beings, a principle 
which, we have seen, is one of the universal truths of 
morality, whether it be taken as a principle of justice or 
of humanity. It is a principle of justice depending upon 
the participation of all in a common humanity; it is a 
principle of humanity as authoritative and cogent as the 
fundamental idea of justice." 

"If this be a just description of slavery," says Dr. 
Thornwell, "the wonder is not that the civilized world is 
now indignant at its outrages and wrongs, but that it has 
been so slow in detecting its enormities, that mankind, 
for so many centuries, acquiesced in a system which con- 
tradicted every impulse of nature, every whisper of con- 
science, every dictate of religion, a system as monstrously 
unnatural as a general effort to walk upon the head or 
think with the feet. We have, however, no hesitation in 
saying that, whatever may be the technical language of 
the law in relation to certain aspects in which slavery is 
j contemplated, the ideas of personal rights and personal 
responsibility pervade the whole system. It is a relation 
of man to man, a form of civil society, of which persons 
are the only elements, and not a relation of man to things. 
Under the Roman code, in which more offensive language 
than that employed by ourselves was used in reference to 
the subject, the apostles did not regard the personality of 
the slave as lost or swallowed up in the propriety of the 
master. They treat him as a man possessed of certain 
rights which it was injustice to disregard, and make it the 
office of Christianity to protect these rights by the solemn 
sanctions of religion, to enforce upon masters the neces- 



FIVE YEARS' WORK AMONG THE NEGROES. 183 

sity, the moral obligation, of rendering to their bondmen 
that which is just and equal. Paul treats the services of 
slaves as duties, not like the toil of the ox or the ass, a 
labor exacted by the stringency of discipline, but a 
moral debt, in the payment of which they were render- 
ing a homage to God. 'Servants/ says he, 'be obedient to 
them that are your masters according to the flesh, with 
fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart as unto 
Christ ; not with eye-service, as men pleasers, but as the 
servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart ; 
with good will doing service as to the Lord, and not to 
men ; knowing that whatever good thing any man doeth, 
the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond 
or free.' We need not say to those who are acquainted 
with the very elements of moral philosophy that obedi- 
ence, except as a figured term, can never be applied to 
any but rational, intelligent, responsible agents. It is a 
voluntary homage to law, implied moral obligation and a 
sense of duty, and can only, in the way of analogy, be 
affirmed of the instinctive submission of brutes, or the 
mechanical employment of instruments and things. 

"The apostle," Dr. Thornwell continues, "not merely 
recognizes the moral agency of slaves in the phraseology 
which he uses, but treats them as possessed of conscience, 
reason and will by the motives which he presses. He says 
to them, in effect, that their services to their masters are 
duties which they owe to God, that a moral character at- 
taches to their works, and that they are the subjects of 
praise or blame, according to the principles upon which 
their obedience is rendered. 'The blind passivity of a 
corpse, or the mechanical subserviency of a tool/ which 
Dr. Channing and Professor Whewell regard as consti- 
tuting the very essence of every system of slavery, pre- 
cluding, as it does, every idea of merit or demerit, of 
approbation or of censure, never seems to have entered 
the head of the apostle. He considered slavery as a social 
and political economy, in which relations subsisted be- 
twixt moral, intelligent, responsible beings, involving 
reciprocal rights and reciprocal obligations. There was 
a right to command, on the one hand, an obligation to 
obey, on the other. Both parties might be guilty of in- 



184 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



justice and of wrong; the master might prostitute his 
power by tyranny, cruelty and iniquitous exactions ; the 
servant might evade his duty from indolence, treachery 
or obstinate self-will. Religion held the scales of justice 
between them, and enforced fidelity upon each by the 
awful sanctions of eternity. This was clearly the aspect 
in which the apostle contemplated the subject. 

"The state of things," Dr. Thornwell says, "so graphi- 
cally described and eloquently deplored by the great 
father of Unitarian Christianity in America, is a pal- 
pable impossibility. The constitution of the human mind 
is in flagrant contradiction to the absorption of the con- 
science, will and understanding of one man into the per- 
sonality of another; it is a thing which cannot be con- 
ceived, and, if it ever could take place, the termination of 
all responsibility on the part of the slave would render it 
ridiculous to labor for his spiritual improvement, or at- 
tribute to him any other immortality than that which 
Indian fables ascribe to the dog as the faithful companion 
of his master. And yet upon this absurdity, that slavery 
divests its victims of humanity, that it degrades them 
from the rank of responsible and voluntary agents to the 
condition of tools or brutes, the whole philosophical argu- 
ment against the morality of the system, as an existing 
institution, is founded. 

"The property of man in man, a fiction to which even 
the imagination cannot give consistency, is the miserable 
cant of those who would storm by prejudice what they 
cannot demolish by argument. We do not even pretend 
that the organs of the body can be said strictly to belong 
to another. The limbs and members of my servant are 
not mine, but his ; they are not tools and instruments 
which I can sport with at pleasure, but the sacred posses- 
sions of a human being, which cannot be invaded without 
the authority of law, and for the use of which he can 
never be divested of his responsibility to God. 

"If, then, slavery is not inconsistent with the existence 
of personal rights and of moral obligation, it may be 
asked, in what does its peculiarity consist ? What is it 
that makes a man a slave ? We answer, the obligation to 
labor for another, determined by the providence of God, 



FIVE YEARS' WOEK AMONG THE NEGROES. 185 

independently of the provisions of a contract. The right 
which the master has is a right not to the man, bnt to his 
labor ; the duty which the slave owes is the service which, 
in conformity with this right, the master exacts. The 
essential difference betwixt free and slave labor is that 
one is rendered in consequence of a contract, the other is 
rendered in consequence of a command. The laborers in 
each case are equally moral, equally responsible, equally 
men ; but they work upon different principles. 

"It is strange that Channing and AVhewell should have 
overlooked the essential distinction of this form of ser- 
vice, as it lies patent in the writings of philosophers who 
preceded them. The definition given by Paley, a man 
preeminently marked by perspicuity of thought and 
vigor of expression, is exactly the same in spirit with our 
own. In the actual condition of society, the intervention 
of a contract is not always a matter of very great moment, 
since it is not always a security to freedom of choice. 
The providence of God marks out for the slave the precise 
services, in the lawful commands of the master, which it 
is the divine will that he should render; the painful 
necessities of his case are often as stringent upon the free 
laborer, and determined with as stern a mandate what 
contracts he shall make. Neither can he be said to select 
his employments. God allots to each his portion, places 
the one immediately under command, and leaves the other 
not unfrequently a petitioner .for a master. 

"Whatever control the master has over the person of 
the slave is subsidiary to this right to his labor ; what he 
sells is not the man, but the property in his services ; true, 
he chastises the man, but the punishments inflicted for 
disobedience are no more inconsistent with personal re- 
sponsibilities than the punishments inflicted by the law 
for breaches of contract. On the contrary, punishment in 
contradiction from suffering always implies responsi- 
bility, and a right which cannot be enforced is a right 
which society, as an organized community, has not yet 
acknowledged. The chastisements of slaves are, accord- 
ingly, no more entitled to awaken indignation of loyal 
and faithful citizens, however pretended philanthropists 
may describe the horrors of the scourge and the lash, than 



186 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



the penalties of disgrace, imprisonment or death, which 
all nations have inflicted upon crimes against the State. 
All that is necessary in any case is that the punishment 
should be just. Pain unrighteously inflicted is cruelty, 
whether that cruelty springs from the tyranny of a single 
master or the tyranny of that greater master, the State. 
Whether adequate provisions shall be made to protect the 
slave from inhumanity and oppression, whether he shall 
be exempt from suffering, except for disobedience and for 
crime, are questions to be decided by the law of the land ; 
and, in this matter, the codes of different nations and of 
the same nation at different times, have been various. 
Justice and religion require that such provisions should 
be made. It is no part of the essence of slavery, however, 
that the rights of the slave should be left to the caprice or 
to the interest of the master ; and in the Southern States 
provisions are actually made — whether adequate or inad- 
equate, it is useless here to discuss — to protect him from 
want, cruelty and unlawful domination. Provisions are 
made which recognize the doctrine of the apostle, that he 
is a subject of rights, and that justice must be rendered to 
his claims. When slavery is pronounced to be essentially 
sinful, the argument cannot turn upon incidental circum- 
stances of this system, upon the defective arrangement 
of the details, the inadequate securities which the law 
awards against infringement of acknowledged rights ; it 
must turn upon the nature of the relation itself, and must 
boldly attempt to prove that he ceases to be a man who is 
under obligation, without the formalities of a contract, to 
labor under the direction and for the benefit of another. 
If such a position is inconsistent with the essential ele- 
ments of humanity, then slavery is inhuman ; if society, 
on the other hand, has distinctly recognized the contrary 
as essential to good order, as in the case of children, ap- 
prentices and criminals, then slavery is consistent with 
the rights of man, and the pathetic declamation of aboli- 
tionists falls to the ground. 

"This view of this subject exposes the confusion, which 
obtains in most popular treatises of morals, of slavery 
with involuntary servitude. The service, in so far as it 
consists in the motions of the limbs or organs of the body, 



FIVE YEARS'' WORK AMONG THE NEGROES. 187 

must be voluntary, or it could not exist at all. If by vol- 
untary be meant, however, that which results from 
hearty consent, and is, accordingly, rendered with cheer- 
fulness, it is precisely the service which the law of God 
enjoins. Servants are exhorted to obey, from considera- 
tions of duty, to make conscience of their tasks, with good 
will doing service as to the Lord, and not to men. 
Whether, in point of fact, their service in this sense shall 
be voluntary will depend upon their moral character. But 
the same may be said of free labor. There are other mo- 
tives beside the lash that may drive men to toil, when they 
are far from toiling with cheerfulness or good will. 
Others groan under their burdens as well as slaves, and 
many a man who works by contract is doomed to an in- 
voluntary servitude, which he as thoroughly detests as the 
most faithless slave who performs nothing but the painful 
drudgery of eye-service. There is a moral bondage, the 
most galling and degrading species of servitude, in which 
he may be held, as with chains of brass, who scorns to call • 
any man master on earth." 

Dr. Thornwell here proceeds to say, "There is a free- 
dom which is the end and glory of man, the only freedom 
which the pen of inspiration has commended. It is the 
freedom which God approves, which J esus bought by his 
blood, and the Holy Spirit seals effectually by his grace ; 
the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. It con- 
sists essentially in the dominion of rectitude, in the eman- 
cipation of the will from the power of sin, the release of 
the affections from the attractions of earth, the exemption 
of the understanding from the deceits of prejudice and 
error. It is a freedom which the truth of God brings 
with it, a freedom enjoyed by the martyr at the stake, a 
slave in his chains, a prisoner in his dungeon, as well as 
the king upon his throne. Independent of time or place, 
or the accidents of fortune, it is the breath of the soul as 
regenerated and redeemed, and can no more be torn 
from us than the atmosphere of heaven can be restrained. 
'If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.' 
This freedom makes man truly a man ; and it is precisely 
the assertion of this freedom, this dominion of rectitude, 
this supremacy of right, which the apostle enjoins upon 



188 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



slaves when he exhorts them to obey their masters, in sin- 
gleness of heart, as unto Christ, to despise eye-service, and 
to do their work as in the eye of God. To obey, under the 
influence of these motives, is to be slaves no longer. This 
is a free service, a service which God accepts as the loyal 
homage of the soul, and which proclaims them to be the 
Lord's freemen, while they honor their masters on earth. 
Such slavery might be their glory, might fit them for 
thrones in the kingdom of God. So far was the apostle, 
therefore, from regarding involuntary servitude as the 
characteristic of slavery that he condemned such servitude 
as a sin. He treats it as something that is abject, mean, 
despicable; but insists, on the other hand, that slavery 
dignifies and ennobles the servant who obeys from the 
heart." 

2. Dr. Thornwell now takes up the question whether, 
admitting that slavery is not absolutely inconsistent with 
moral responsibility, it yet does not strip the slave of some 
of the rights which belong to him essentially as a man ; 
and whether slavery is not, in this view, incompatible 
with the spirit of the gospel. This question, he says, com- 
prises the whole moral difficulty of slavery. It is at this 
point that the friends and enemies of the system are 
equally tempted to run into extravagance and excess, the 
one party denying the inestimable value of freedom, the 
other exaggerating the nature and extent of human rights, 
and both overlooking the real scope and purpose of the 
gospel in relation to the present interests of man. 

That the design of Christianity is to secure the perfec- 
tion of the race is obvious from all its arrangements, and 
that, when this end shall have been consummated, slavery 
must cease to exist, is equally clear. This is only assert- 
ing there will be no bondage in heaven. If Adam had 
never sinned and brought death into the world with all 
our woe, the bondage of man to man would never have 
been instituted ; and when the effects of transgression 
shall have been purged from the earth, all bondage shall 
be abolished. In this sense slavery is inconsistent with 
the spirit of the gospel, viz., that it contemplates a state 
of things, an existing economy, which it is the design of 
the gospel to remove. Slavery is a part of the curse 



FIVE YEAES J WOEK AMONG THE NEGROES. 189 

which sin has introduced into the world, and stands in the 
same general relations to Christianity as poverty, sick- 
ness, disease or death. In other words, it is a relation 
which can only be conceived as taking place among fallen 
beings tainted with a curse. It springs, not from the 
nature of man as man, nor from the nature of society as 
such, but from the nature of man as sinful and the nature 
of society as disordered. 

Upon an earth radiant with the smile of heaven, or in 
the paradise of God, we can no more picture the figure of 
a slave than we can picture the figures of the halt, the 
maimed, the lame and the blind ; we can no more fancy 
the existence of masters and tasks than we can dream of 
hospitals and beggars. These are the badges of a fallen 
world. That it is inconsistent with a perfect state, that 
it is not absolutely a good, a blessing, the most strenuous 
defender of slavery ought not to permit himself to deny ; 
and the devout believer in revelation would be mad to 
close his eyes to the fact that the form in which it is first 
threatened in the Bible is as a punishment for crime. It 
is a natural evil which God has visited upon society, be- 
cause man kept not his first estate, but fell, and, under 
the gospel, is turned, like all other natural evils, into the 
means of an effective spiritual discipline. The gospel 
does not propose to make our present state a perfect one, 
to make our earth a heaven. Here is where the philan- 
thropists mistake. 

Admit, then, that slavery is inconsistent with the spirit 
of the gospel as that spirit is to find its full development 
in a state of glory, yet the conclusion by no means fol- 
lows that it is inconsistent with the spirit of the gospel, 
as that spirit operates among rebels and sinners in a de- 
graded world, and under a dispensation of grace. The 
real question is, whether it is incompatible with the 
spiritual prosperity of individuals, or the general progress 
and education of society. It is clearly the office of the 
gospel to train men, by virtue of the discipline of tempta- 
tion, hardship and evil, for a state of perfection and 
glory. Nothing is inconsistent with it which does not 
present obstacles to the practice of duty, which its own 
grace is inadequate to surmount. Whoever, therefore, 



190 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



would maintain that slavery is incompatible with the 
present relations of the gospel to man, must maintain that 
it precludes him, by its very nature, from the discharge 
of some of the duties which the gospel enjoins. It is 
nothing to the purpose to speak of it generally and 
vaguely as an evil ; it must be shown to be an evil of that 
specific kind which necessitates the commission of sin and 
the neglect of duty. Neither is it sufficient to say that it 
presents strong temptations to sin, in the violent motives 
which a master may press upon a slave to execute unlaw- 
ful commands. This can be affirmed of numberless other 
situations in which none will contend that it is unlawful 
to be found. The question is, not whether it is the state 
most favorable to the offices of piety and virtue, but 
whether it is essentially incompatible with their exercise. 
This is the true issue. 

The fundamental mistake of those who affirm slavery 
to be essentially sinful, is that the duties of all men are 
specifically the same. Though they do not state the prop- 
osition in so many words, and, in its naked form, would 
probably dissent from it, yet a little attention to their 
reason puts it beyond doubt, that this is the radical as- 
sumption upon which they proceed, all men are bound to 
do specifically the same things. As there are, obviously, 
duties of some men, in some relations, which cannot be 
practised by a slave, they infer that the institution strips 
him of his rights, and curtails the fair proportions of his 
humanity. The argument, fully and legitimately carried 
out, would condemn every arrangement of society which 
did not secure to all its members an absolute equality of 
position; it is the very spirit of socialism and commun- 
ism. 

Now, unless slavery is incompatible with the habitudes 
of holiness, unless it is inconsistent with the spirit of phil- 
anthropy or the spirit of piety, unless it furnishes no 
opportunities for obedience to the law, it is not incon- 
sistent with the pursuit or attainment of the highest 
excellence. It is no abridgment of moral freedom; the 
slave may come from the probation of his circumstances 
as fully stamped with the image of God as those who have 
enjoyed an easier lot ; he may be as completely in unison 



FIVE YEARS' WORK AMONG THE NEGROES. 191 

with the spirit of universal rectitude as if he had been 
trained on flowery beds of ease. Let him discharge his 
whole duty in the actual circumstances of his case, and 
he is entitled to the praise of a perfect and an upright 
man. The question with God is, not what he has done, 
but how. Man looketh at the outward circumstances, but 
God looketh at the heart. Hence those moralists are 
grievously in error who have represented slavery as in- 
consistent with the full complement of human duty. 

~No proposition can be clearer than that the rights of 
man must be ultimately traced to his duties, and are 
nothing more than the obligations of his fellows to let him 
alone in the discharge of. all the functions, and the enjoy- 
ment of all the blessings of his lot. Whatever puts an 
obstruction or hindrance to the complement of his duties, 
is an encroachment upon the complement of his rights as 
a man. Whatever is incompatible with the exercise of his 
moral nature, is destructive of the fundamental law of 
his being. But, as the moral discipline of man is con- 
sistent with the greatest variety of external condition, it 
is consistent with the greatest variety of contingent rights, 
of rights which spring from peculiar circumstances and 
peculiar relations, and in the absence of which a man may 
still be a man. These cannot be treated as a fixed and 
invariable quantity. Dependent as they are upon our 
duties, which, in turn, are dependent upon our circum- 
stances, they fluctuate with the gradations and progress of 
society, being wider or narrower, according to the spheres 
in which we move. It is only by postulating duties for 
the slave which God has not enjoined on him, that any 
show of decency can be given to the declamations against 
the robbery and fraud w T hich have incapacitated him to 
perform them. The slave has rights, all the rights which 
belong essentially to humanity, and without which his 
nature could not be human or his conduct susceptible of 
praise or blame. In the enjoyment of these rights, relig- 
ion demands that he should be protected. 

But, then, there are rights which belong to men in other 
situations, to which he is by no means entitled, the rights 
of the citizen, for example, and the free member of the 
commonwealth. They are not his, for the simple reason 



192 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



that they are not essential, but contingent ; they do not 
spring from humanity, simply considered, for then they 
would belong to women and children, but from humanity 
in such and such relations. 

As to the influence of slavery upon the advancement of 
society, there can be no doubt, if the government of God 
be moral, that the true progress of communities and 
States, as well as the highest interests of individuals, de- 
pends upon the fidelity with which the duties are dis- 
charged imevery condition of life. It is the great law of 
providential education that, "to every one that hath shall 
be given, and he shall have abundance ; but from him that 
hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." 
In this way the reign of universal justice is promoted, 
and, wherever that obtains, the development of the indi- 
vidual, which is the great end of all social and political 
institutions, must infallibly take place. The prosperity 
of the State, at the same time, is secured, and secured, too, 
without the necessity of sudden changes or violent revolu- 
tions. It will be like the vigor of a healthful body, in 
which all the limbs and organs perform their appropriate 
functions without collision or tumult, and its ascension 
to a high degree of moral elevation will be like the growth 
of such a body, silent and imperceptible, the natural re- 
sult of the blessing of God upon the means he has ap- 
pointed. Let masters and servants, each in their re- 
spective spheres, be impregnated with the principle of 
duty ; let masters resolve to render unto their servants that 
which is just and equal, never transcending the legitimate 
bounds of their authority, and servants resolve to cherish 
sentiments of reverence for their masters according to 
the flesh, never falling short of the legitimate claims on 
their obedience, and the chief good of each, as individuals 
and as men, will be most surely promoted, while each will 
contribute an important share to the strength and stability 
of the commonwealth. The feet are as indispensable to 
the head as the head to the feet. The social fabric is 
made up of divers ingredients, and the cement which 
binds them together in durability and unity is the cement 
of justice. 

Beside the arguments drawn from considerations of 



FIVE YEARS'' WORK AMONG THE NEGROES. 193 

justice and the essential rights of humanity, the incom- 
patibility of slavery with the spirit and temper of the 
gospel is not unfrequently attempted to be made out from 
the injunction of the Saviour to love our neighbor as our- 
selves, and to do unto others as we would have them do 
unto us. The principle, however, upon which the precept 
of universal benevolence is interpreted, in this case, 
makes it the sanction of the grossest wickedness. If we 
are to regulate our conduct to others by the arbitrary 
expectations which, in their circumstances, our passions 
and selfishness might prompt us to indulge, there ceases 
to be any other standard of morality than caprice. The 
humor of every man becomes law. The judge could not 
condemn the criminal nor the executioner behead him; 
the rich man could not claim his possessions nor the poor 
learn patience from their sufferings. If I am bound to 
emancipate my slave, because, if the tables were turned, 
and our situations reversed, I should covet this boon from 
him, I should be bound, upon the same principle, to pro- 
mote my indigent neighbors around me to an absolute 
equality with myself. That neither the Jews, in whose 
law the precept was first formally announced, nor the 
apostles, to whom it was more fully expounded by the 
Saviour, ever applied it in the sense of the abolitionists, is 
a strong presumption against their mode of interpreta- 
tion. The truth is, the precept is simply the inculcation 
of justice from motives of love. Our Saviour directs us 
to do unto others what, in their situations, it would be 
right and reasonable in us to expect from them. We are 
to put ourselves in their situations, that we may duly 
weigh the circumstances of their case, and so be prepared 
to apply to it the principles of universal justice. We are 
to let no motives of indolence, ease or apathy prevent us 
from considering their condition. We are to take the 
same interest in them that we would take in ourselves, 
and are to extend to them the same protection of the 
divine law which we would insist upon for ourselves. 
The rule, then, simply requires, in the case of slavery, 
that we should treat our slaves as we should feel that we 
had a right to be treated if Ave were slaves ourselves ; it 
is only enforcing, by benevolence, the apostolic injunc- 



194 MY LIFE AND TIMES. 

tion, "Masters, give unto your servants that which is just 
and equal." Do right, in other words, as you would claim 
right. 

The instances which are usually urged to prove that 
slavery is inconsistent with the rights of man, unfortu- 
nately for the argument, are not peculiar to slavery. 
They are incidents of poverty wherever it prevails in a 
distressing form ; and a wise system of legislation could 
much more easily detach them from the system of slavery 
than from the deep indigence which is sure to crush the 
laborer where a crowded population obtains. They are, 
at best, only abuses, in the one case, which might be cor- 
rected, while in the other they seem to be inseparable 
elements. 

It may be worth while to notice the popular argument 
against slavery drawn from the fact, that, as it must have 
begun in the perpetration of grievous wrong, no lapse of 
time can make it subsequently right — prescription can 
never sanctify injustice. The answer turns upon the dis- 
tinction between the wrong itself and the effects of the 
wrong. The criminal act, whatever it may have been, by 
which a man was reduced to the condition of bondage, can 
never cease to be otherwise than criminal, but the rela- 
tions to which that act gave rise may, themselves, be con- 
sistent with the will of God, and the foundation of new 
and important duties. The relations of a man to his 
natural offspring, though wickedly formed, give rise to 
duties which would be ill-discharged by the destruction 
of the child. ]^o doubt the principle upon which slavery 
has been most largely engrafted into society as an integral 
element of its complex constitution — the principle that 
captivity in war gives a right to the life of a prisoner for 
which his bondage is accepted in exchange — is not con- 
sistent with the truth of the case. But it was recognized 
as true for ages and generations ; it was a step in the 
moral development of nations, and has laid the founda- 
tion of institutions and usages which cannot now be dis- 
turbed with impunity, and in regard to which our conduct 
must be regulated by the fact of their existence, and not 
by speculation upon the morality of their origin. Our 
world exhibits everywhere the traces of sin; and, if 



FIVE YEARS' WOEK AMOjSTG THE NEGROES. 195 

we tolerate nothing but what we may expect to find in a 
state of perfection and holiness, we must leave this scene 
of sublunary distraction. The education of States is a 
slow process. Their standard of rectitude slowly approx- 
imates the standard of God, and in their ages of infancy, 
ignorance and blindness, they establish many institutions 
upon false maxims, which cannot subsequently be extir- 
pated without abandoning the whole of the real progress 
they have made, and reconstituting society afresh. These 
things, moreover, take place under the sleepless provi- 
dence of God, who is surely accomplishing his own great 
purposes, and who makes the wrath of man to praise him, 
and restrains at pleasure the remainder of wrath. 

Enough has been said to show that slavery is not repug- 
nant to the spirit of the gospel in its present relations to 
our race. It is one of the conditions in which God is 
conducting the moral probation of man — a condition not 
incompatible with the highest moral freedom, the true 
glory of the race, and, therefore, not unfit for the moral 
and spiritual discipline which Christianity has instituted. 
It is one of the schools in which immortal spirits are 
trained for their final destiny. If it is attended with * 
severer hardships, these hardships are compensated by 
fewer duties, and the very violence of its temptations 
gives dignity and lustre to its virtues. The slave may be 
fitted, in his humble and, if you please, degraded lot, for 
shining as a star in the firmament of heaven. In his 
narrow sphere he may be cherishing and cultivating a 
spirit which shall render him meet for the society of 
angels and the everlasting enjoyment of God. The Chris- 
tian beholds in him, not a tool, not a chattel, not a brute 
or thing, but an immortal spirit, assigned to a particular 
position in this world of wretchedness and sin, in which 
he is required to work out the destiny which attaches to 
him, in common with his fellows, as a man. He is an 
actor on the broad theatre of life ; and, as true merit de- 
pends, not so much upon the part which is assigned as 
upon the propriety and dignity with which it is sustained, 
so fidelitv in this relation may hereafter be as conspicu- 
ously rewarded as fidelity in more exalted stations. 
Angels and God look not upon the outward state of man - y 



196 



MY LIFE AiSTD TIMES. 



the poverty, rags and wretchedness of one, the robes, dia- 
dems and crowns of another, are nothing. True worth is 
the moral vesture of the soul. The spirit of obedience, 
the love of holiness, sympathy with God, these are the 
things which make men beautiful and glorious. This is 
true freedom; these are the things which shall endure 
and nourish with increasing lustre when thrones have 
crumbled in the dust and republics mouldered among the 
ruins of the past. 

In treating slavery as an existing institution, a fact 
involving most important moral relations, one of the 
prime duties of the State is to protect, by temporal legis- 
lation, the real rights of the slave. The moral sense of 
the country acknowledges them; the religion of the 
country, to a large extent, insures their observance ; but, 
until they are defined by law and enforced by penalties, 
there is no adequate protection of them. They are in the 
category of imperfect, and not of perfect, rights. The 
effect of legal protection would be to counteract whatever 
tendencies to produce servility and abjectness of mind 
slavery may be supposed to possess. It would inspire a 
sense of personal responsibility, a certain degree of man- 
liness and dignity of character which would be at once 
a security to the master and an immense blessing to the 
slave. The meanness, cunning, hypocrisy, lying and 
theft, which accompany a sense of degradation would 
give place to the opposite virtues, and there would be no 
foundation in our social relations for that slavery which 
Cicero defines, obedientia fracti animi et dbjecti, et arbi- 
trio carentis suo. 

In the different systems of slavery, taken collectively, 
all the essential rights of humanity have been recognized 
by law, showing that there is nothing in the relation 
itself inconsistent with this legal protection. The right to 
acquire knowledge, which is practically admitted by us, 
though legally denied, was fully recognized by the Ro- 
mans, whose slaves were often the teachers of their chil- 
dren and the scholars of the commonwealth. The right 
of the family was formally protected among the Span- 
iards ; and the right to personal safety is largely pro- 
tected by ourselves. But, without stopping to inquire in 



FIVE YEARS' WORK AMONG THE NEGROES. 197 

what way temporal legislation may most effectually pro- 
tect the rights of the slave, we hesitate not to affirm, that 
one of the highest and most solemn obligations which 
rest upon the masters of the South is to give their ser- 
vants, to the utmost extent of their ability, free access 
to the instructions and institutions of the gospel. The 
injustice of denying to them food and raiment and shelter, 
against which the law effectually guards, is nothing to 
the injustice of defrauding them of that bread which 
cometh down from heaven. Their labor is ours. From 
infancy to age, they attend on us ; they greet our intro- 
duction into the world with smiles of joy, and lament 
our departure with a heartfelt sorrow ; and every motive 
of humanity and religion exacts from us that we should 
remunerate their services by putting within their reach 
the means of securing a blessed immortality. The mean- 
est slave has in him a soul of priceless value. "~No 
earthly or celestial language can exaggerate its worth. 
Thought, reason, conscience, the capacity of virtue, the 
capacity of Christian love, an immortal destiny, an inti- 
mate moral connection with God — here are attributes of 
our common humanity which reduce to insignificance all 
outward distinctions, and make every human being' 7 a 
sublime, an awful object. That soul has sinned; it is 
under the curse of the Almighty, and nothing can save it 
from an intolerable hell but the redemption that is in 
Christ Jesus. They must hear this joyful sound or 
perish. For "how shall they believe in him of whom 
they have not heard, and how shall they hear without a 
preacher, and how shall they preach except they be sent V 7 
Our design in giving them the gospel is not to civilize 
them, not to change their social condition, not to exalt 
them into citizens or freemen ; it is to save them. The 
church contemplates them only as sinners, and she is 
straitened to declare unto them the unsearchable riches 
of Christ. She sees them as the poor of the land under 
the lawful dominion of their masters ; and she says to 
these masters, in the name and by the authority of God, 
Give them what justice, benevolence, humanity would 
demand, even for a stranger, an enemy, a persecutor — 
give them the gospel, without which life will be a curse. 



198 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



Sweeten their toil, sanctify their lives, hallow their 
deaths. 

The solemnities of this night are a proof that the call 
has not been wholly disregarded among us. The work 
which we here begin is a good work. God grant that such 
work may never cease until every slave in the land is 
brought under the tuition of Jesus of Sfazareth! JSTone 
need be afraid of his lessons.V It was said of him on earth 
that he should not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to', 
be heard in the streets. He was no stirrer up of strife, 
no mover of sedition. His "religion, on the other hand, is 
the pillar of society, the safeguard of nations, the parent 
of social order, which alone has power to curb the fury" 
of the passions, and secure to every one his rights : to the 
laborious, the reward of their industry ; to the rich, the 
enjoyment of their wealth ; to nobles, the preservation of 
their honors, and to the princes, the stability of their 
thrones." Insurrection, anarchy and bloodshed, revolt 
against masters, or treason against States, were never 
learned in the school of him whose apostles enjoins sub- 
jection to the magistrate and obedience to all lawful au- 
thority as characteristic duties of the faithful. Is any- 
thing to be apprehended from the instructions of him 
in whose text-book it is recorded, "Let as many servants 
as are under the yoke, count their masters worthy of all 
honor" ? Christian knowledge inculcates contentment 
with our lot ; and, in bringing before us the tremendous 
realities of eternity, renders us comparatively indifferent 
to the inconveniences and hardships of time. It subdues 
those passions and prejudices from which all real danger 
to the social economy springs. "Some have objected," 
says a splendid writer,* "to the instruction of the lower 
classes from an apprehension that it would lift them 
above their sphere, make them dissatisfied with their sta- 
tion in life, and, by impairing the habits of subordi- 
nation, endanger the tranquillity of the State; an objec- 
tion devoid, surely, of all force and validity. It is not 
easy to conceive in what manner instructing men in their 

* Robert Hall. Advantages of Knowledge to' the Lower Classes 
{Works, Vol. I., p. 202). 



FIVE YEAES J WOEK AMONG THE NEGROES. 199 

duties can prompt them to neglect those duties, or how 
that enlargement of reason, which enables them to compre- 
hend the true grounds of authority, and the obligation to 
obedience, should indispose them to obey. The admirable 
mechanism of society, together with that subordination 
of ranks which is essential to its subsistence, is surely not 
an elaborate imposture which the exercise of reason will 
detect and expose. The objection we have stated implies 
a reflection on the social order equally impolitic, invid- 
ious and unjust. Nothing, in reality, renders legitimate 
governments so insecure as extreme ignorance in the peo- 
ple. It is this which yields them an easy prey to seduc- 
tion, makes them the victims of prejudice and false 
alarms, and so ferocious withal, that their interference in 
a time of public commotion is more to be dreaded than the 
eruption of a volcano. 

It is thus Dr. Thornwell set forth the Christian doc- 
trine of slavery. Had my Charleston undertaking been 
productive of no other good than the inducing of Dr. 
Thornwell to prepare this admirable exposition, I should 
not feel that my time and labor had been spent in vain. 
The text itself is the sermon. It either contains or it 
suggests all the ideas which the preacher presented to his 
congregation. The very name which it gives to slave- 
holders, and then to our Lord Jesus himself, is most sig- 
nificant, making it manifest that the slaveholder, in the 
xlpostle's apprehension, is not the dreadful character de- 
scribed by abolitionists. If the doctrine of this sermon 
is not the truth of the gospel, the apostle had not dared 
to apply the same name to us and our Saviour; he had 
made a misnomer in calling us by the name he gives 
to Christ, or he had blasphemed our Lord by ap- 
plying to him a title which befits us, only because it 
covered up all the enormous wickedness of which we were 
guilty. 

These principles, as Dr. Thornwell sets them forth, are 
scriptural. They cannot die. Slavery is dead in the + 
South, and the South has no tears to shed over it. But 
these principles cannot die. Could expositions of them, 
like this one, have reached the North in time, and been 
disseminated far and wide, and fairly considered by all 



200 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



that people, the current of subsequent events might possi- 
bly have been changed. 

But. though these principles cannot die. they must 
needs be set forth continually: because the true 

" Freedom's battle once begun. 
Bequeath'd by faithful sire to son,. 
Though baffled oft, is ever won." 

And— 

" Truth crushed to earth shall rise again; 
The eternal years of God are hers.'"' 

Yes, these principles cannot die, and so, too, though 
slavery be dead, the battle for them must still go on ; be- 
cause the war against Christianity by Atheism, in all its 
varied forms, is far from being ended, and the friends of 
truth must be ceaselessly active in disseminating the prin- 
ciples of the word of God. Dr. Thormvell well says, 
"What disasters it will be necessary to pass through be- 
fore the nations can be taught the lessons of providence, 
what lights shall be extinguished and what horrors ex- 
perienced, no human sagacity can foresee. But that the 
world is now the theatre of an extraordinary conflict of 
great principles ; that the foundations of society are about 
to be explored to their depths, and the sources of social 
and political prosperity laid bare ; that the questions in 
dispute involve all that is dear and precious to man on 
earth — the most superficial observer cannot fail to per- 
ceive. Experiment after experiment may be made, disas- 
ter succeed disaster, in carrying out the principles of an 
atheistic philosophy, until the nations, wearied and heart- 
sickened with changes without improvement, shall open 
their eyes to the real causes of their calamities, and learn 
the lessons which wisdom shall evolve from the events that 
shall come to pass. Truth must triumph. God will vin- 
dicate the appointments of his providence.*' 



CHAPTEK VIII. 



Retirement from the Negeo Work. — Dr. Girardeau 
Succeeds. — Eyes Recuperate erom Eive Years'' 
Farm Life. — Called to Theological Seminary. 

1852-1857. 

IGAYE over five years, that is, from 1846 to the close 
of 1851, to the enterprise of establishing a church in 
Charleston for negro instruction separately from the 
whites, but under a white minister and white Sunday- 
school teachers. . During these years I was also consider- 
ably occupied in the domestic missionary work of my 
presbytery, and also promoting the interest of our Theo- 
logical Seminary at Columbia in various ways, as in 
carrying on a long correspondence with Dr. McGill, of 
Allegheny Seminary, in the hope of inducing him to be- 
come our professor of Church History and Polity. This, 
however, proved a vain effort, though the correspondence 
was very much protracted. He did come and serve us, 
however, for a little while. 

Early in 1850 there culminated another tremendous 
agitation in the South in respect to disunion. There was 
still the same dissatisfaction with the tariff law, by which 
the government was building up the Northern manufac- 
turers at the expense of the Southern agriculturists ; but 
another and very dangerous element was now added to 
this dissatisfaction. Abolition sentiment at the North 
was now of seventeen years' growth; the underground 
railroad had been established; slaves were lured away 
from their homes and masters, and the North would not 
surrender such fugitives, as she was bound to do by the 
Constitution of the United States ; meanwhile, the South 
was beginning to be flooded with incendiary documents 
designed to rouse up insurrections by the negroes. 
Twenty years ago the question with the South was of nul- 
lification. Now it was of secession. My father, now an 
old man of seventy-three, was again on the Union side, 



202 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



and very much roused. But the excitement by no means 
equalled the period of 1830. I confess that my sympa- 
thies were not with him in this case. Still I was not 
prepared to go to extremes. I had grave doubts about the 
course that was advocated by a great many, and my father 
was so urgent that I should cast my vote against disunion 
that I yielded to his pressure and voted with him. I ap- 
pend here an interesting extract from a letter of Dr. 
Thornwell, addressed to me on this subject, of date, South 
Carolina College, March 8, 1850 : 

The condition of the country is a ceaseless burden on my spirits. 
The prospect of disunion I am unable to contemplate without ab- 
solute horror. That this confederacy can be broken up, and the 
numberless questions arising out of its common interests adjusted 
without war, is a mere dream of the fancy. We must calculate from 
the obvious relations of the parties, upon the most bloody, ferocious 
and unscrupulous succession of hostilities in the annals of history. 
In addition to this, the attempt in the present age, when all the 
elements of disorder, socialism, communism, rabid democracy and 
open atheism are busily at work, the attempt under such circum- 
stances to organize new governments and to frame new constitu- 
tions, will be perilous in the extreme. Political quackery will have 
full scope, and after trying the vile nostrums which the atheistic 
philosophy of Europe has long been preparing for the evils of the 
world, we shall be compelled to fall back upon a military despotism, 
or something not much better. In this reign of anarchy and con- 
fusion, religion must retreat to the caves and the mountains. Our 
missionary operations must all be arrested. Our efforts to spread 
the Bible, to evangelize the country and to convert the world, must 
be abandoned, and darkness must be permitted to cover the earth 
and gross darkness the people. My soul is cast down within me, and 
I have hardly ceased for some weeks past to pray God, day and 
night, in behalf of the country. My hope is only in him. Vain, in 
this crisis, is the help of man. To my mind the dissolution of the 
Union is synonymous with ruin; ruin to us, ruin to the North, ruin 
to all parties. It is another name for war, cruelty, political experi- 
ments, licentiousness, irreligion, atheism, anarchy. There is no 
telling where the process is to stop. California will certainly set 
up for itself, Texas may file off, and as slavery dies out in the older 
States of the Southern Confederacy, the elements will be introduced 
of fresh agitations and fresh divisions. I cannot dwell upon the 
subject. May God mercifully turn the tide and send peace and pros- 
perity, at least in our days. 



EETIREMEjSTT from the xegeo work. 203 

At the close of 1851, the Rev. Ferdinand Jacobs took 
my place in the Anson street negro work, until the Rev. 
John L. Girardeau should be able to enter upon it. 

It must have been early in 1852 that I assisted Dr. 
Howe and some other brethren in securing from the 
churches of South Carolina the endowment of a professor- 
ship in Oglethorpe College at Milledgeville, Georgia. 
This endowment had been promised to the churches of 
Georgia as compensation to them for their endowment 
of a chair in the Theological Seminary, which belonged 
to the synods of South Carolina and Georgia. But years 
had passed, and the South Carolina promise was never 
fulfilled. Considerable irritation between the two bodies 
was the consequence, and an earnest effort began to be 
made by a few of our brethren in this State to remove 
this cause of offence. It was my privilege to visit the 
churches of Harmony Presbytery and aid their pastors 
in securing the full share of this endowment which was 
allotted to each by the synod. Our efforts were successful, 
and great was the joy that followed, when we were able 
completely to fulfill our promises. 

But the General Assembly was to meet that year, on 
the 20th of May, in the city of Charleston, and, of course, 
I could not set out on my visit to the up-country until 
after that meeting. I was put on the committee of recep- 
tion. There were two delegates from !N"ew England who 
came to the Assembly. One of these was an intimate • 
Princeton Seminary friend of mine, the Rev. J. K. Con- 
verse. The name of the other I am not able to recall. He 
was a very nice and intelligent gentleman, who was very 
much alive to everything that concerned our negroes. I 
wanted my friend Converse, of course, to be at my house ; 
and I thought I could also make the other gentleman com- 
fortable, in all respects, if I got him to stay with me. He 
wanted to know everything that related to our slaves, for 
whom he expressed very particular sympathy and affec- 
tion. Of course, he was greatly interested to hear all 
about my church for the colored people. He waited im- 
patiently for Sunday to come, when he promised himself 
the pleasure of attending at their place of worship, and 
joining in religious services with them. He was the more 



204: 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



interested about this service when he learned that the 
communion of the Lord's Supper would be administered 
on that occasion to the black people, and also to their 
white friends who might be present. Sunday afternoon 
came when he was to accompany us to this service, but he 
could not be found. We looked everywhere for him in 
vain. He had taken himself off. It turned out that the 
idea of a communion season for the two races together, 
when he had once got time to think about it, scared him. 
' He was alarmed lest it might happen to him to drink out 
of the same cup of which the negroes had partaken. We 
did not hear much from him about our slaves after this. 

The General Assembly, which was now to begin its 
meeting in Charleston, was of our yet undivided Presby- 
terian Church, and consisted of commissioners from both 
jSTorth and South. The retiring Moderator was my friend 
Humphrey, the same who stood at my side in the excited 
Evangelical Alliance at London in 1846, and was the 
first, after Dr. Smyth, to second my protest there. Six 
years had made him a very eminent minister in the Pres- 
byterian Church. The sermon with which he opened the 
Assembly delighted the people of Charleston very greatly, 
by his elegant references to the Huguenot forefathers of 
many of our citizens. Many people were greatly de- 
lighted with the whole proceedings ; but some of the acts 
of the Assembly gave very great dissatisfaction to many 
sound and earnest Presbyterians. I append here the 
larger part of a letter which Dr. Thornwell wrote me, 
dated 2d June, almost immediately after the dissolution 
of that Assembly : 

What I want specially to write to you about is the course of the 
late Assembly. It has filled me with profound sorrow. Most of its 
proceedings were mere nothings — a series of inanities — but the only 
measures of any consequence that it thought proper to adopt were 
steps backward. It has lowered the tone of the church upon every 
subject on which she has heretofore spoken, and manifested a spirit 
of compromise and concession to mere carnal influences of which I 
am heartily ashamed. Things seem to me to have been done in utter 
confusion. Resolutions adopted which nobody understood; all was 
hurry, and, as a necessary consequence, much was folly, if nothing 
worse. I shall instance in three things: 

1. There was the discontinuance of the Popery sermon. This cir- 



THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1852. 



205 



cumstance is significant. It is a concession which ought never to 
have been made. Some of the arguments would have done very well 
if the question were, shall we institute such a sermon ? but the ques- 
tion is very different when it assumes the shape of backing out from 
a position already assumed. I regretted this resolution very much. 
I regretted particularly that it should have passed in Charleston 
just at this time. 

2. There was the vote of censure upon the records of the Synod of 
South Carolina. This vote goes much further than any previous 
action of the Assembly, or any other church court. It is a virtual 
declaration that ruling elders are mere cyphers, and the sooner we V 
kick them out of our courts the better. The resolution of our 
Synod did not affirm that their presence was essential to the con- 
stitution of a court, or that its proceedings were invalid without 
them; it affirmed just the opposite of these things, and maintained 
only that it was not regular; it was not the spirit of our constitu- 
tion (which contemplates an equal number of ministers and ruling 
elders) to organize without them. This, it seems, however, is not to 
be endured. If they happen to be there, they may be allowed to sit; 

if not there, nobody cares; we can get along as well without them. 
What makes this abominable vote still worse, I have seen no one yet 
who knew what he was voting about when he gave his vote. The 
stab was inflicted in the dark. 

3. But the most atrocious of all the proceedings was the resolu- 
tion in relation to the Charleston Union Presbytery. Every single 
distinctive feature of the past testimony of the church, in the great 
struggle which terminated in the rupture of 1837-1838, has here 
been formally or virtually surrendered. The elective affinity prin- 
ciple has been endorsed out and out; the right of every court to 
■examine its members surrendered, and the preeminent importance of 
soundness in the faith in the gospel ministry, virtually denied by 
affirming that the boldest of all declarations, that of adherence to 
our doctrinal standards, a declaration which every New- School man 
during our whole controversy repeated ad nauseam, shall be suffi- v- 
cient, even in cases where there is the strongest reason to suspect 
that these standards are interpreted after a fashion that no Old- 
School man can approve. I cannot express my amazement that such 

a measure could have been swallowed by a General Assembly of the 
Old-School church. 

Things were going on finely among us. Public sympathy was in 
our direction, or getting to be so, in Charleston. We had adopted a 
policy, which surely, but slowly, would have Presbyterianized all 
the independent churches in the low country; everything was play- 
ing into our hands, and we needed nothing but patience and perse- 
verance to succeed. But this measure has thrown us back, and re- 



206 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



indorsed the principle of a union in one mongrel court of every 
species of creature that will call itself Calvinist. The effects will 
be deplorable. This Assembly ought to have done what the Assem- 
bly of 1845 did. This same memorial, or one like it, was presented 
to that body, and after being heard or explained, was quietly laid 
upon the table. That Assembly was composed of good men and true. 
I have no idea that ten men can be found in the Synod who will 
obey the injunction. We shall refuse, and appoint a committee to 
argue our case at the bar of the next Assembly. We shall appeal 
from Philip drunk to Philip sober. The resolution will be repealed 
as soon as the case is understood. It is well, however, that we do 
not meet next year at Buffalo at the same time with the New School 
body, as we might have gotten into another love fit, and received the 
whole batch of them, with tears of penitence in our eyes, and hum- 
ble petitions of pardon on our lips, for all past outrages upon their 
orthodoxy. 

I have written hastily just to unburden. I am full, and, as the 
fish-woman said, "I shall burst if I do not let some of the steam 
out." Our poor church is in the hands of God; this is my comfort, 
and it is the only thing which reconciles me to labor for her good. 
Human folly is so provoking, especially when, by one egregious ab- 
surdity, it upsets the work of years, that none of us could have the 
heart to toil on if it were not that God shall make the wrath of man 
to praise him. 

Having been present myself a deeply interested spec- 
tator, and an anxious listener to all that was said, I feel 
bound to say that haste and confusion seemed to me to 
characterize all the work of this Assembly more than any 
reputable quality. 

As to the Charleston Union Presbytery, the action 
taken by the Assembly was exceedingly offensive and un- 
just to all those in Charleston who were connected with 
itself. The Charleston Union Presbytery was a mixed 
body, having been originally formed, as its name implies, 
partly of Congregationalists and partly of Presbyterians. 
For the Assembly to receive such a body into union with 
itself was to endorse the old "plan of union" between 
Congregationalists and Presbyterians, which proved so- 
fruitful of disorder in the Northwest, and operated so 
efficaciously to produce the division of the Presbyterian 
Church in 1837 and 1838. Then, again, the Assembly, 
by its action in Charleston, endorsed that vicious princi- 
ple of "elective affinity," alluded to by Dr. Thornwell, 



THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1852. 



207 



which, had "been so productive of heresy, as well as con- 
tention, sixty years ago. According to it, where, in a 
presbytery, serious, or, I might say, fatal differences of 
doctrinal belief prevailed, and rendered harmony impos- 
sible between its members, the body was allowed to dis- 
solve itself, and the various individual members of it, like 
the mixed-up particles of two distinct metals, each seeking 
after its own kind, be reunited into two presbyteries, one 
of Old School and the other of New School views, but both 
occupying the very same territory. Any one can see how 
destructive this would necessarily be, not only of purity, " 
but also of peace. The Assembly of 1852 made arrange- 
ments for the Charleston Union Presbytery and its own 
Presbytery of Charleston to occupy the very same terri- 
tory, and both to be acknowledged as under its authority. 
"All this mischief" (as Dr. Thorn well writes to Dr. 
Breckinridge on the 28th of June) "was done upon an 
ex parte statement of the Charleston Union Presbytery, 
which statement was never read in the Assembly at all, 
but referred to a committee, and that committee reported 
by naked resolution. The facts of the case were not be- 
fore the house. The committee reports its judgment upon 
the facts, and that judgment is all that the Assembly had 
regularly before it." Dr. Thorn well well adds : "There 
were the strongest local reasons why the Assembly should 
not have touched this business. The Charleston Presby- 
tery had adopted, and was systematically pursuing, a line 
of policy which in a few years would have extinguished . 
independency in the low country. We were gradually ab- 
sorbing all its churches. ISTew Schoolism was dead. All 
Ave wanted was to be let alone; but now things are put 
back where they were twenty years ago." 

Accordingly, on the 14th of June I wrote thus to Dr. 
Thornwell : 

If the Assembly deserve blame for their blind and thoughtless and 
unconstitutional action, much more should the commissioners from 
our own presbyteries receive censure for the representations which 
they made, and the representations they did not make, in the case. 

Especially was Mr. B found fault with for his course. He 

capped the climax by assuring the Assembly, contrary to the warn- 
ings we gave him the night before, that the action they were taking 



208 MY LIFE AND TIMES. 

would please us all, and by imploring them, almost with tears, to 
act a mother's part, and, leaving nothing for the Synod to do, just 
to take both parties and bind them at once together.* As I stood 
there listening to such unwarrantable statements from our own 
representatives, I felt sick of the misplaced charity which reigned in 
the Assembly, and which induced our own brethren to lead that body 
astray. I can be charitable myself when we meet other Christian 
ministers on outside ground. I was associated for twelve years as 
a missionary to the Armenians with New England Congregation- 
alists, and we lived and constantly worked together in perfect 
charity. And, though I sometimes feel that the chief mistake of my 
life was to enter upon foreign missionary work in connection with 
the American Board, yet my 'judgment approves to this day the 
course I pursued while thus associated. Yet, when the question is 
as to receiving into our own church, which has its metes and bounds 
all marked down, a body of men who are not true and real Presby- 
terians, I have no use for any mawkish sentimentalism. The char- 
ity which does not guard the doors in such case, I call treachery. 

It should, however, be stated, that this whole unright- 
eous affair was consummated when the Synod, at its first 
subsequent meeting, amalgamated these two bodies into 
one presbytery. 

About the middle of June I set out to search for a home 
in the mountains, with my wife and four children. I also 
took with me my servant, Sarah. For the children and 
this servant, I had a carriage drawn by two horses. I 
had also a good driver. Part of my baggage was attached 
to this carriage ; the remainder filled up the hinder part 
of the one-horse buggy, which I drove, with my wife be- 
side me. Carriages, horses and all were conveyed by 
railroad as far as Greenwood, where we spent the night at 
Dr. Calhoun's hotel ; the next day we set out in our vehi- 
cles for Abbeville, thence to Greenville and to Asheville, 

* The Assembly, however, stopped short of Mr. B 's earnest 

petition : but it took order to have the same accomplished. Here 
is the resolution it adopted: "Resolved, That if the Charleston Union 
Presbytery shall make known to the stated clerk of the General 
Assembly their adhersion to this General Assembly and its doctrinal 
standards prior to the next annual meeting of the Synod of South 
Carolina, it shall be the duty of the stated clerk to communicate the 
same, without delay, to said Synod ; and the Synod shall thereupon 
enroll them as a regular presbytery in connection with this body." 



SEARCHING FOE A HOME. 209 

4 

~N. C. We also penetrated into Tennessee one day's ride 
looking for a home. How different forty-five years ago 
were the towns I have named, Greenwood, Abbeville, 
Greenville, Asheville, from what each of them has grown 
to be at the period of this writing. They were indeed 
then nothing but small towns ; each of them now a flour- 
ishing city. I had found thus far no rest for the soles of 
our feet. Returning to Greenville, I met the Rev. S. S. 
Gaillard, who was then stationed at Greenville. He was 
about to set out to meet the South Carolina Presbytery, 
near Pendleton, at what was then known as Mt. Zion 
church. That congregation has since put up a fine brick 
building at a better spot, and the old church still stands, 
but is used as a gin-house for packing cotton. Being on 
my way to Clarksville, Ga., through Pendleton, I agreed 
that we should accompany Brother Gaillard to the South 
Carolina Presbytery's meeting. He took us, for the first 
night, to the hospitable dwelling of Major McCann, a 
Presbyterian elder living half way between Greenville and 
Pendleton. His house was well known then as open to 
all Presbyterian ministers on their journeys, and our 
large company was most kindly entertained. The next 
day Major McCann and I drove Gaillard's buggy, and he 
occupied a seat alongside of my wife and drove my fiery 
Kentucky mare. As the Major and I drove along, we 
passed by a church building on the right-hand side of the 
road. He said, a That is called the No-Hell Church." 
A TJniversalist preacher had come along some years pre- 
vious and got this building put up for him to occupy in 
preaching. His doctrine was new to that community. 
As they came to understand what he preached, the build- 
ing got the significant name which the Major had re- 
peated. This sobriquet killed off the stranger's enter- 
prise. His congregation very shortly deserted him en- 
tirely. The logical conclusion to which they had arrived 
was, that if there was no hell, there was no need of any 
church or any preacher, and the building remained shut 
up. 

We reached the presbytery's place of meeting towards 
the close of the afternoon, and there I met, amongst other 
ministers, my friend Buist, and renewed my acquaint- 



210 MY LIFE AND TIMES. 

* 

ance, formed long before, with McNeill Turner and 
David Humphreys, whom they now called Father 
Humphreys. With McNeill Turner, latelv deceased 
after many years' service, I had been intimately ac- 
quainted from our very boyhood. David Humphreys I 
had known as a young Presbyterian preacher when I had 
travelled in the winter of 1833 through all these up coun- 
try churches, preaching to them about foreign missions. 
I became acquainted now, also, with several of the ruling 
elders. One of them, old Mr. Josiah Gaillard, the father 
of the minister, invited me and my family to his house. 
There we met with a very cordial reception, but my 
youngest daughter got sick, and I had to move up next 
day to the village of Pendleton, where I found quarters 
at the old Cherry Hotel, afterwards burnt down. We 
were detained here several days. Mr. Elam Sharpe, a 
Presbyterian ruling elder, undertook to show me around. 
The first place he took me to was Woodburn, which had 
been the residence, for many years, of Mr. Charles Cotes- 
worth Pinckney, but he had recently sold out to Mr. 
David Taylor. I fell in love with Woodburn at first 
^ sight — the beautiful ride through its woods up to the 
house, the fine old dwelling itself, the splendid mountain 
view seen from its windows, the beautiful road down to 
the stable, running over a ridge, with trees filling a hollow 
on the left hand, and on the right hand a romantic forest 
ravine. And, then, beyond the stable the fertile acres of 
bottom land. All these together made a deep impression 
on my fancy. It became clear to my secret thoughts that 
this, with its four hundred and fifty acres, was the home 
I was looking for. From Pendleton we went over to 
Clarksville, Ga., visiting Toccoa and Tallulah Falls by 
the way. I had made a promise to the Pev. Mr. Ketchum 
that I would settle nowhere without first seeing Clarks- 
ville and its surroundings. It is a beautiful country, and, 
moreover, had some personal attractions for us ; amongst 
them, my good old friend and my father's friend, the ex- 
cellent Eobert Campbell, Esq., a true Irish gentleman, 
and a consistent Christian. But Woodburn had hold of 
my heart. The Pinckneys had named it from a couplet 
in one of Walter Scott's poems, as follows : 



FIVE YEARS OF FARM LIFE. 



211 



" Where Reed upon her margin sees 
Sweet Woodburn's cottages and trees." 

It seemed, indeed, to me a very sweet place. It has 
long been a sweet place, though it has grown to be very 
much larger than when I bought it. It has been forty- 
five years in our family, and belonging now, with all his 
additions and improvements, to my nephew, Augustine T. 
Smythe, it is still a sweet place. I had not long returned 
to Pendleton before it became mine by purchase, and I 
began to repair and enlarge the old mansion, and to erect 
some necessary buildings. I had come to this mountain 
region on account of my damaged eyesight, and I was to 
devote myself to outdoor employment in this delicious 
climate. I had many things to see after, and was con- 
tinually on horseback, and my eyes were very much ben- 
efited. 

I must have attended the South Carolina Presbytery's 
spring meeting in 1853, though I cannot recall where it 
met. Being transferred from the Charleston Presbytery, 
I was then and there received as a member of the other 
body. So, too, I cannot recall where its fall meeting was 
held, but I remember well how kind my brethren were 
to me in appointing me their commissioner to the next 
General Assembly at Buffalo, 1ST. Y., in May, 1854. 

In the fall of 1853, there was a meeting of the Synod 
of South Carolina, in the city of Anderson. The Bev. B. 
M. Palmer, Jr., was then the very much beloved and ad- 
mired minister of our church at Columbia, and the chair 
of Church History and Polity being vacant, a very strong 
desire was felt, by sundry influential men, to transfer 
him from the pulpit to that chair. There was very long 
and earnest opposition to this measure, and the debate 
occupied two whole days. We defeated the proposition 
by a very large majority. The friends of the measure 
were greatly surprised and very much disappointed, and 
those who opposed it regretted very much that they had 
been forced to take that action. Their decided opposition 
to removing Dr. Palmer from the pulpit was well known 
to those who inaugurated and urged this movement, but 
these men overrated their own strength, and were con- 
fident of easily carrying their measure through the Synod. 



212 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES 



A good deal of excitement was aroused during this dis- 
cussion. ~Not one member of the opposition questioned 
the eminent fitness of Dr. Palmer for the vacant chair, 
but considered him as very specially called to the public- 
preaching of the glorious gospel. Thus, it was settled by 
the Synod of South Carolina in 1853, that such a pastor- 
ship as Palmer then occupied, must take precedence over 
a professorship in a Theological Seminary. 

The Buffalo Assembly of 1854 was the first I ever at- 
tended as a commissioner. This was eight years after my 
return from the East. Sitting in the hall of the American 
Hotel at Buffalo, and waiting for the hour to go over to 
the Assembly's first meeting, I saw a gentleman walking 
up and down in front of my seat, and I happened to catch 
a glance of his eyes. I rose immediately, stood before 
him and put my two hands on his shoulders, and, looking 
him fully in the face, I said to him, "Who am I ?" He 
said, "I really do not know." I said, "Look backwards, 
and a good many years." He was still perfectly non- 
plussed. I said to him, "Why, David H. Little, you 
don't remember your room-mate at Lnion College, and 
those deep religious experiences we passed through to- 
gether V 7 His name was Little ; but when we roomed to- 
gether, my person was very little, and I had changed a 
great deal more than he had. We had many a long talk 
after this, and when the Assembly closed, I visited him at 
his residence in Cherry Valley, in !New York. 

To my great surprise and bewilderment the Kentucky 
brethren, headed by Stuart Bobinson, insisted on nomi- 
nating me to be Moderator of the Assembly. This was 
purely because I was known to hold the same views as 
Thornwell and Palmer. But Dr. Kobert L. Breckinridge, 
who was present, said he would vote for me on the ground 
that, when I returned from foreign service, I had "be- 
come a negro-preacher." He went on to express what I 
think is a true principle, that the honors of the church 
should be paid to the men who had labored and suffered 
for her, only he should have added this condition, pro- 
vided they are qualified for the office that was to honor 
them. For the office of Moderator I certainly was not 
qualified, for some eighteen years I had been engaged 



FIVE YEARS OF FARM EIFE. 



213 



in work that did not fit me to preside over the Assembly. 
I had had but little experience as to the proceedings of 
our church courts. 

Of course I was not elected. The chair was occupied 
by Dr. Henry A. Boardman, a Seminary class-mate of 
mine, a gentleman and a scholar, who was every way 
fitted to perform the duties imposed on him. And I, ac- 
cording to the Assembly's custom, was made the chairman 
of one of the most important standing committees, 
namely, the Committee of Domestic Missions. Every 
man who happened to be nominated as Moderator always 
received this kind of honor. 

At the Assembly of 1851 1 made the acquaintance, per- 
sonally, of Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, which was very 
valuable to me, and became somewhat intimate as years 
rolled on. Here also I learned to know that other great 
man, Stuart Robinson. I renewed my college acquaint- 
ance with the somewhat celebrated Dr. McMaster, of New 
Albany Seminary, Ohio. In general, I learned a good 
deal about the condition and affairs of the whole Presby- 
terian Church. 

At the close of the Assembly my wife and I crossed over 
into Canada and visited a little town on Lake Ontario, 
where dwelt the parents of an English lady, with whom 
we were negotiating to obtain her services as governess , 
for our three daughters. We had met her in Clarksville, 
Georgia, and, by appointment, we met her again here at 
her father's house. Our agreement with her was per- 
fected, and subsequently, in October, she entered our 
family, and she remained with us until after the war, 
and, after finishing the education of my daughters, she 
went to live with one of them, in whose family she still 
abides, and where she expects to close her days. 

October 13, 1851, Dr. Palmer wrote me as follows: "I 
have just returned from the Seceder Synod, where 
Brother Banks and myself were very kindly received ; 
and, perhaps, as much was accomplished as could be rea- 
sonably anticipated at the outset. A similar deputation 
was appointed to attend our Synod, and a committee 
raised to confer with any similar committee on our side. 
I was gratified to find nearly all the leading members 



214 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



anxious for the proposed union, but the body, as a whole, 
and especially the members of the church at large, are 
scarcely prepared yet for such a result. I hope we shall 
be patient and forbearing, as far as becomes a proper 
Christian self-respect ; and, if no more, intercommunion 
between the branches will be effected." 

I cannot recall how, precisely, began these efforts to 
effect union with that body and our Synod, but I know 
that, on the part of many in our body, the desire for this 
end was very sincere and earnest. TTe considered them 
to be strict Presbyterians, and aware of the growing 
laxity of Presbyterian principle amongst ourselves, we 
anticipated, if I may use a homely phrase, some stiffen- 
ing of our Synod's backbone from the union with these 
Seceder Brethren. They stand apart from us and deny 
us access to the Lord's table in their church, only, so far 
as I know, on the question of Psalmody. Their position 
is that God has given to his church inspired Psalms to 
sing in his public worship, and that it is, therefore, un- 
lawful to sing in that worship any hymns composed by 
uninspired men. Our position is, that the Christian 
church has been furnished with Christian doctrine as a 
higher development of divine truth than the Jews pos- 
sessed, and may, therefore, well expect to have given her 
also a Christian, though uninspired Psalmody. There 
are some parts of Old Testament Scripture, for example, 
some chapters in Leviticus and Xumbers, which we do not 
find profitable for reading in Christian congregations. 
And so there are some of the Psalms which were suited to 
the church in Old Testament times, but which are not 
adapted to the JSTew Testament church. Let no man say 
we are casting reproach on God's inspired word or ordi- 
nances. Xo one will venture to insist that the Old Testa- 
ment priesthood or the Old Testament sacrifices are dis- 
honored by us, because we hold that they are not suited 
to the Christian church. 

I think our negotiations with the Associate Reformed 
brethren had no practical result. 

In September of this year I was both surprised and 
gratified by a unanimous election to the presidency of 
Davidson College. I received letters from Drs. Howe 



FIVE YEARS OF FARM LIFE. 



215 



and Palmer urging me to postpone my decision of the 
question, thus brought before me, until after our Synod's 
meeting, when certain plans respecting the Seminary 
were expected to be settled, with which plans my own 
name had been involved, to a considerable degree. I was 
too well aware, however, of my incompetency for the 
presidency of the college to admit of my delaying a reply 
to the proposition from Davidson. 

The summer of 1854 was very much occupied, as just 
now intimated, by our brethren at Columbia and a few 
leading members of the board in plans for the recupera- 
tion of the Seminary. Dr. Thornwell had, many times 
during his connection with the South Carolina College, 
had misgivings whether that was really, in all respects, 
the right place for his life work. For many years he had 
filled the professorship of Sacred Literature and the Evi- 
dences of Christianity, being, at the same time, chaplain 
to the college. When, in 1851, he became the president 
he still continued to be chaplain, as well as to fill the 
chair of Sacred Literature and the Evidences of Chris- 
tianity. As a minister of the gospel, there were many, 
in the successive classes of the college, who became his 
spiritual children during their college life. In the 
minds of a great many more he had planted the seeds of 
gospel truth, whose fruits appeared long years after- 
wards. Yet, notwithstanding the fruitfulness of his min- 
istry in that institution, it was known to his intimate 
friends that he would like to be more directly engaged 
in the service of the church. Still further, the presiden- 
tial office involved too much of the government of the 
institution for his strength. He had too much mere police 
work to do. It was evident that he could not long con- 
tinue in that office. Yet he had instituted some most- 
valuable reforms in the management of the college, and 
its friends, for many reasons, were extremely anxious to 
retain him in that office, as well as in the duties of profes- 
sor and chaplain. 

The truth was, there was much to be said on both sides 
of the question of his transfer from the college to the pro- 
fessorship of Theology in the Seminary, which now began 
to be seriously considered by some friends of this latter 



216 



MY EIFE AND TIMES. 



institution. Confessedly, his position in the college was 
one of vast importance to our whole State. Unspeakable 
injury to her youth, and to many of her most influential 
citizens, and to the interests of religion in general, had 
been the result of Dr. Cooper's influence as president of 
the college. The Christian people of the State, with one 
accord, at length had cried out against his longer con- 
tinuance in office. The influence of Presidents Barnwell, 
Thornwell and Dr. Elliott, had in turn succeeded, and had 
seemed, to all religious people, like daylight after dark- 
ness. The friends of the Seminary knew well what a 
sacrifice they were demanding of the college, but the 
Presbyterian Church had lent him to the State for a long 
time, and they now stood in great need of his services in 
the education of their rising ministry. At the same time, 
they greatly desired that Dr. Thornwell should devote 
himself largely to authorship. As Dr. Palmer has well 
said, in his Biography of Dr. Thornwell, "The controlling 
motive with those who advocated his translation to the 
Theological Seminary was that, in the prosecution of its 
sacred studies, he might pour out upon the church and 
upon the world the treasures of knowledge stored up 
through years of patient acquisition. Alas ! that the 
wish, so ardently cherished, should have been only half 
realized! The reader will not close the perusal of his 
theological lectures, in the first volume of his Collected 
Writings, without a sigh that the church did not have the 
wisdom to effect the change in his position at least five 
years earlier. As Dr. Breckinridge says in a letter, 'The 
blade was too sharp for the scabbard. 7 Too much study 
and too much care had already done their fearful execu- 
tion upon a feeble frame ; and death came in with his sad 
arrest before the great work which the church desired 
was half executed." At length (Biography, pp. 382- 
383) the scheme, which had slowly matured in a few 
minds and was discussed at first only in private circles, 
took shape in definite resolutions prepared by the Board 
of Directors. The venerable Dr. Leland had cheerfully 
and cordially acceded to what was proposed. He was 
willing, in his old age, to vacate the chair of Didactic and 
Polemic Theology, that such an eminent instructor as Dr. 



FIVE YEARS OF FARM LIFE. 



217 



Thornwell should be secured to succeed him. The board's 
"definite resolutions/' above referred to, were ready the 
last of June, or first of July, 1854. They contemplated 
the appointment of Dr. Thornwell to the chair of The- 
ology, and of Dr. Palmer to the chair of Church History 
and Polity, which he had been provisionally and gratui- 
tously occupying for some time, in connection with his 
pastorship of the Columbia church. At the regular meet- 
ing of the Synod of South Carolina, on the 15th of No- 
vember, 1854, at Charleston, these resolutions came up, 
and were thoroughly discussed. Dr. Palmer's position 
was fully explained and set before the Synod. He knew 
how desirable it was, on many grounds, to effect the trans- 
fer to the Seminary of our great theologian. He was will- 
ing to be or to do anything which the board proposed, if 
the Synod also concurred, in order to effect this great 
object. Dr. Thornwell was not present at this meeting of 
the Synod. His mind had been all along in great perplex- 
ity, having doubts in regard to several points relating to 
the transfer. He wanted, as stated before, to be in the 
more direct service of the church ; but he was serving her 
already in one institution of sacred learning, and the 
change from that to another similar institution did not 
altogether satisfy his longings. Moreover, he had been 
in doubt whether the number of candidates for the min- 
istry in the South was sufficient to warrant the proposed 
transfer. He was doubtful ( whether the cheapness of 
living at Danville, as compared with Columbia, would 
not decide many to go to the former place who might 
otherwise be expected to come to Columbia. He had been 
even doubtful whether, all things considered, he might 
not be more useful to the church in the college than at the 
Seminary, and he therefore had contemplated the change 
not without fear, as well as pain. His heart had been 
long and greatly devoted to the college. He felt that 
nothing but the sternest necessity could justify the sac- 
rifice he was called to make, but he had become satisfied 
that that necessity did exist. Things had reached a crisis 
in the Seminary. It was much to be dreaded that, with- 
out some very decisive movement, the next session of the 
Seminary would open with a mere handful of students ; 



218 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



and the Synod was certainly looking to him to raise up 
the dying institution. He knew how much was expected 
of him, and he was not willing to undertake the task, 
unless he had his friend and brother Palmer at his side 
to aid him in the effort. Such was the condition of the 
case which was now to be debated. 

The discussion which ensued was long and earnest. 
Great influence had been employed to persuade members 
of the Synod, particularly the elders present, to vote 
against what was proposed. Many leading men in the 
State were bitterly opposed to the measure. Some of 
these had sons whom they were desirous to have educated 
at the South Carolina College under Dr. Thormvell. 
Many prominent Presbyterians, influenced by these and 
other honorable motives, stood out against the transfer. 
As has been intimated already, much could be said on 
behalf of the college, and much was said. But the Sem- 
inary also had very strong friends on the floor, and, for a 
good while, the issue seemed to be doubtful. Amongst 
other things, it was maintained by the former class that 
Dr. Thornwell could not be induced to leave the college, 
and not a few members of the Synod seemed to accept this 
statement. It had leaked out that I had in my pocket Dr. 
Thornwell' s written statement of what really were his 
ideas, and I was urged by many to produce it, but I had 
reasons for not complying immediately. At length, when 
the subject had been thoroughly discussed on its own 
merits, I produced the letter, and had it read by the clerk 
of Synod. It was listened to with breathless interest. 
Here is the letter : 

South Carolina College. Xovember 15, 1854. 
My Dear Brother : I was very much mortified that Brother 
Bishop left this morning without my seeing him. as I had resolred 
to send you a note by him. It may not be too late yet. What I 
, have to say it this : I cannot consider the call to the Seminary with- 
out provisions made for an adequate support. I do not expect the 
salary which I now get,, but I will not undertake to live on two 
thousand dollars. If an adequate support is secured., and it is the 
impression of the Synod, expressed by a large majority, that I 
ought to take the theological chair, and no providential hinderances 
should interpose, or plain intimations that I ought to stay where I 
am, I have made up my mind to go. With much love. 

Your friend and brother, J. H. Thorxwell. 



FIVE YEARS OF FARM LIFE. 



219 



This communication made it manifest to all what was 
Dr. Tkornwell's own judgment in the case. The vote 
which followed convinced him what was the impression of 
the Synod. On the 29th of November he tendered his 
resignation of the presidency of the college, but was met 
loy the trustees, as once before, when called to a church 
in Baltimore, with the enforcement of the law, which 
required a year's notice before the resignation could take 
■effect. He was not, therefore, actually released until the 
4th of December, 1855, when his successor was elected, 
and he immediately began his work in the Seminary. Im- 
mediately, also, Dr. Palmer and I began our effort to raise 
forty thousand dollars for the Thornwell professorship. 

We began our work with Georgia, and from the three 
-cities of Augusta, Savannah and Athens, which were all 
that we visited, we obtained $4,672.50. We proceeded to 
Alabama, and, from various churches in that State, got 
$5,264. We went on to New Orleans, and there spent 
several weeks, obtaining $2,865. Finding it necessary to 
return homeward, Charleston gave us $17,783. From 
South Carolina Presbytery we got $5,448. From Edisto 
and John's Island we got $4,000. These amounts foot 
up $40,032.50. 

These figures I take from my original memoranda, 
made forty-three years ago, but I will not vouch for their 
absolute correctness. What we obtained was, some of it, 
in cash, but chiefly in notes, bearing interest, and payable 
in one, two and three years to Andrew Crawford, treas- 
urer of the board. I have no doubt they were all, or 
nearly all, paid in due time. We ceased our work when 
we had got to the forty thousand dollar mark. We might 
have gone on and obtained further generous subscriptions 
from churches in Georgia, as well as from Bethel and 
Harmony Presbyteries, and I cannot, at this long dis- 
tance of time, explain exactly why we did not pursue that 
course. 

The Presbyterians of New Orleans all fell in love with 
Dr. Palmer, and I soon began to anticipate what shortly 
came to pass. At the spring meeting of Charleston Pres- 
bytery, in 1855, there was presented a very earnest call 
for him to become their pastor. This was breaking up 



220 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



the plan which the Synods of South Carolina and Georgia 
had laboriously constructed for the Seminary. Accord- 
ingly, presbytery, after earnest debate, refused to put the 
call into Dr. Palmer's hand. A second call, from the same 
church, came before us at our fall meeting, and presby- 
tery thought it proper, in the circumstances, to refer the 
question to the Synod, which met at Columbia. A num- 
ber of those who, at Anderson in 1853, had opposed 
Palmer's removal from the pulpit to the Seminary, still 
maintained their ground, and all these were ready to sus- 
tain the !N"ew Orleans call. On the other hand, some of 
these very men, viewing, as most important to the inter- 
ests of our church, Thornwell's, and, with him, Palmer's, 
transfer to the Seminary, were now anxious to defeat the 
call from Xew Orleans. Many were the able speeches 
made, both for and against that call, and, for a long time, 
the issue was doubtful. Dr. Palmer very candidly and 
fully explained his position. He was desirous to accept 
the call, and preach the gospel in that great city of the 
Southwest, but he was still willing, as a year before, to 
be guided by the Synod, yielding his convictions to their 
judgment. He was well understood on all hands. The 
chief argument for the call, as many stated it, was "the 
manifest leadings of Providence" in its favor. It seemed 
to me that what they called the leadings of Providence 
were nothing but very natural and very reasonable wishes 
of certain good people in Xew Orleans. They knew a 
good preacher when they heard him, and this opportunity 
had been several times enjoyed by them. They desired 
to have him with very great desire, and were determined 
to make every effort to get him. Other large and impor- 
tant churches, perhaps to the number of fifteen or twenty, 
had had the same desire, only they had not pursued the 
fulfillment of it with such avidity. Was it possible, I 
asked, that, in all these different cases, "the leadings of 
Providence" had been perfectly manifest, and yet Divine 
Providence could not effect its own desired end ? Then, 
Dr. Thornwell took up this argument from the leadings of 
Providence, and tore it all to pieces. He said Closes 
might have reasoned that the leadings of Providence were 
pointing him to the Egyptian throne. He was the 



FIVE YEARS OF FARM LIFE. 



221 



adopted son of the king's royal daughter. He had every 
qualification for the place, and, probably, everybody in 
Egypt was sure of his succeeding to it ; but Providence 
really designed him, and was preparing him, for a very 
different office. We are not competent to interpret the 
leadings of Providence. When considered by us most 
dear in favor of something that we wish, they are, often- 
times, not the real expression of God's purpose and plan. 
The word is our only rule, but we need the Holy Spirit 
to guide us in applying the rule. Even Abraham, when 
God called him to the sacrifice of Isaac, did not know 
what really was the divine will, until the very moment 
when about to put the knife to his son's throat. So, said 
Dr. Thornwell, Dr. Palmer cannot know what is to be 
his duty respecting this call, until this Synod's vote on 
the solemn question before us shall make it known to him. 
This set the question in its true light before every mem- 
h>er of the body. I rose and asked Dr. Palmer if he would 
consider it a grievance should his brethren refuse to let 
him have his manifest preference in this matter. He 
answered that it had just been well stated, that we were, 
on this occasion, the appointed exponents of the divine 
will to him, and he trusted he would feel it no grievance 
if the divine will were to bring on him a fever. There 
was immediate silence in the Synod ; every man felt that 
Palmer's comparison settled the question. The vote was 
•called for, and, by a very large majority, the call was put 
into his hands and was accepted. Dr. Thornwell was very 
much affected as the voting went on. I happened to be 
sitting by his side. In his characteristic simplicity, and 
with a mournful tone, he whispered, "I feel as if I were 
going to a funeral." Then he whispered to me again, "If 
the vote is for E"ew Orleans, I shall nominate you in his 
place." I whispered in return, "Oh ! don't do that, for I 
should not be able to accept." In a little while, the ques- 
tion of a successor to Dr. Palmer came up, and Thorn- 
well went straight on and nominated me, and I was 
elected. I felt very much as I did, when, at the college 
•commencement in 1853, I heard him making certain an- 
nouncements in Latin of proceedings by the trustees, 
amongst them, that I had received the degree of Doctor 



222 



MY LIFE AISTD TIMES. 



of Divinity. I took what lie said, on both occasions, as 
honor put on me by one whose wondrous intellect, accom- 
panied, as it was, with learning, both profound and va- 
ried, were never matched by any man I have personally 
known. Of course, I did not immediately decline. 
Thornwell had taken me by surprise. I could not but 
take time to consider the question. After the Synod had 
adjourned, whether I declined earlier or later, the matter 
could not well be mended. The Synod could not well be 
called together for another election. It would be very 
expensive, and, perhaps, impossible, to get together at 
any place, an adequate representation of the whole body. 
So, therefore, I had time to consider. I began to see very 
soon how many and serious were the difficulties in my 
way. I had added other lands to my original purchase- 
Improvements, numerous and varied, had been com- 
menced, which had to be finished, and that under my own. 
eye. It would be very difficult to sell my plantation 
without serious loss, and, to put it under the care of an 
overseer for eight months in the year, while I should be 
in Columbia, was objectionable in many respects. But 
my greatest difficulty I have not yet stated. My brother 
William's death, in 1853, made it necessary for me to 
become the guardian of his family, and to take charge of 
the education of his five young children. I had induced 
his widow to bring them and live at Pendleton. I could 
not go and leave them behind. I had to sell her place, and 
that without any loss. Had I given out publicly that I 
was compelled to move, without delay, to Columbia, I 
would have been put to great disadvantage as to the sale 
of her property. Had I committed it to the care of some 
agent, and gone off to Columbia, it would still have be- 
come a forced sale, involving loss. Thus I acted under 
the strong conviction that there was no providential duty 
that would require this neglect of her interest at my 
hands. 

On the other hand, my farm life and outdoor occupa- 
tions for some years had greatly benefited my sight. I 
had no wish to continue farming, now that the necessity 
seemed to have passed away. I had become anxious to 
return to the proper business of a gospel minister. To- 



CALLED TO THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 223 

teach the history and polity of the church would he an 
occupation much to my taste. If Thornwell desired me 
as a co-professor, I was much more than willing to stand 
at his back. So the call I had received was every way 
very attractive to me. But, just here, I have to state 
that, during my whole life, I had been obliged, on many 
important occasions, to disappoint my honored father. 
He wanted me to go to Germany and become a great 
scholar, but I felt bound to decline his generous offers, 
and become a foreign missionary. When I was obliged 
to leave my foreign work, I know I disappointed his ex- 
pectations, although he did not, as I had feared, make 
any opposition to my becoming a negro missionary in 
Charleston ; but, on the contrary, he bought for me a 
fine house to live in. Hardly had he settled me in this 
nice dwelling than the state of my eyes compelled me to 
leave Charleston, and the house was thrown on his hands 
to be disposed of. Very soon he established me on a very 
desirable farm and dwelling near Pendleton; and here, 
now, I was going to propose another new and altogether 
unexpected plan of action ! What else could he think of 
me than that I was a rolling stone that never would 
gather any moss ? He was, indeed, very much opposed to 
this new idea, and so were my brothers and the whole 
family. 

It was not possible for me to run counter, very soon, to 
all the opposition which I met. But I hoped, after some 
delay, to overcome it all. Yet, as I look back now, over 
more than forty years, what I should have done was to 
have declined the call made by the Synod. 

I was elected in November, 1856. On the 7th of the 
next month I received from Dr. Girardeau a very urgent 
letter, giving reasons why I ought to accept the call. It 
was just such an argument as one, then the negro mission- 
ary in Charleston, might very naturally employ with the 
former negro missionary in Charleston whom he had suc- 
ceeded. It was to impress on me what an opportunity I 
would have to direct the minds of my classes in the Sem- i 
inary to this great field of negro evangelization, in which 
we were both so much interested. At the opening of the 
next year, viz., on the 27th of January, 1857, Dr. Breck- 



224 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



inridge also writes me from Danville, "I hope you have 
gone or will go to Columbia; it would take long to tell 
why — but it seems to me very clear you should go : clear 
on personal accounts ; clear on public accounts ; espe- 
cially clear on Seminary accounts. There has taken place 
in our church a great reaction as to vital religion and its 
true foundations within twenty years ; and, of late, that 
reaction has thrown into our seminaries, for the training 
of our ministers, a portion of its own force, to which it 
is of incalculable importance to give a permanent lodg- 
ment exactly there. To make this at once efficacious and 
permanent requires more than one man, more than one 
frail human existence in each seminary ; while, therefore, 
no one can expect more from Thornwell than I do, be- 
cause no one knows more thoroughly how great a work 
he can do, I feel it to be of great consequence that men 
like-minded should be with him, to stand in his place if 
he falls, to work to the same great ends while he abides. 
As to special facts, I know nothing, but they ought to be 
wonderfully clear and powerful, as, it seems to me, to 
keep you from this work." Both these letters were very 
impressive, but, on the 10th of December, 1856, Dr. 
Thornwell had sent me one which proved much more so. 
He says, "In relation to yourself, the difficulties which 
are gathering or have gathered around you, only render 
your duty the more manifest. Your external call was 
clear and unambiguous ; it was, indeed, very remarkable. 
The internal one must be equally obvious, if you will 
only reflect upon the state of your mind beforehand. You 
wanted the door open, and you professed a willingness to 
make any sacrifices to enter it. God has opened it and 
put you to the trial. He has thought you worth trying, 
and, therefore, father and brother and sister are permit- 
ted to rise up against you, to give you the opportunity of 
showing that his voice is louder in your ears than theirs. 
The case to me is very plain, and I shall really tremble 
for you if you decline. Your mouth must be shut against 
any prayer, hereafter, for a field of ministerial labor. 
God may say, 'I called and you refused.' " If, in any 
way, it were proper to speak of myself in connection with 
the three "mighties," Farel, Calvin and Thornwell, I 



CALLED TO THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 



225 



might say Thornwell's expostulation with me and his 
awful reference to the ear of the Almighty being shut 
against any future prayer of mine, terrified me as much 
as Farel's denunciation of God's wrath against Calvin, if 
he did not immediately begin to preach at Geneva, ter- 
rified the reformer, and at once began to control his con- 
duct. I certainly did want to be set free from my en- 
tanglements, and, very mercifully, the day of my deliver- 
ance was nigh. 

A hint was somehow conveyed to me that Mrs. John C. 
Calhoun, widow of our great Senator, admired the place 
of my sister, in the immediate neighborhood of which she 
had just purchased a cottage, and had come to live there. 
I determined at once to ride over and see if I could sell 
the property to her. The sun was setting as I mounted 
my horse, and, if I ever did pray in my life, I besought 
the Master, as I rode along, that he would prosper me on 
my errand, and so enable me to obey his providential call. 
Mrs. Calhoun admitted that she liked the place, but ob- 
jected to the price I asked. I explained to her that I was 
in such a position of responsibility as absolutely prevented 
my reducing it at all. I told her the original price of the 
house and seventy-five acres of land, with the repairs and 
improvements that I had made, had cost my sister six 
thousand and four hundred dollars, and that I was bound 
to obtain exactly that sum to a cent. She felt the force 
of this announcement, and only replied, "But what shall 
I do with my cottage ?" I asked her what was the price 
of that cottage, with the acres attached to it, and she told 
me twenty-five hundred dollars. I said immediately, 
a Mrs. Calhoun, I will take your cottage, at that price, as 
part payment of my sister's property." So much was set- 
tled then. I rode home thankful and rejoicing. Next 
day I rode to the village and sold Mrs. Calhoun's cottage 
for twenty-five hundred dollars to Mr. John T. Sloan. 
The necessary papers and securities were all at once ar- 
ranged, and every installment was paid by each party, 
with interest, on the very day it became due, Mr. John 
Lorton acting as Mrs. Calhoun's agent. I was once more 
a free man. My father said to my brother Robert, "John 
managed that affair very well." Ear better than this, it 



226 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



was evident that God had not yet shut his ear to my 
prayers. I repaired, without delay, to Columbia, and be- 
gan my work in the Seminary, continuing it till the vaca- 
tion in May. The following month I purchased a house, 
and, at the close of the vacation, I moved my sister's fam- 
ily, together with mine, to Columbia. 



CHAPTEK IX. 



Literary Work, Writing, Editing, Publishing. — 
Seminary Life. — Calvin's Institutes. 

THE first religious newspaper published in Charles- 
ton, that I remember, was the Charleston Observer, . 
which began to be published somewhere about 1825, 
though I have an indistinct impression that there was one- 
which preceded this. The editor of the Charleston Ob- 
server was the Rev. Benjamin Gildersleeve, a strong man 
and a sound Presbyterian, whose son is the eminent Pro- 
fessor Gildersleeve of Johns Hopkins University. The 
editor became quite prominent and very useful in the Old 
and New School controversy. He had, at one time, also, a 
little tilt with John England, the famous Roman Cath- 
olic bishop of Charleston, in which he came off quite vic- 
torious. Here it occurs to me to introduce a laughable 
incident of his useful life. He opened, at one time, a 
private school for young ladies, which he kept on his own 
premises. One of my sisters, now seventy-six years old, 
was a pupil, and she remembers seeing the eminent pro- 
fessor, then a small lad, come in to recite his Latin lesson. 
There was a big round table, sitting in the middle of the 
school-room. Basil either did not know or would not 
study his lesson, and the Rev. Benjamin rose to chastise 
the lad, w o ran round the table, and his father after him 
in success^ ll pursuit. All this in the presence of a lot of 
young ladt js who, probably, sympathized more with the 
boy than \ ith their preceptor. But, behold ! what grand 
results ha^e followed that strict parental discipline. 
Here, now, is both comfort for a boy coming under faith- 
ful discipline, and encouragement for a teacher faithful 
enough to administer it. 

After a long and successful editorial career in Charles- 
ton, Mr. Gildersleeve was induced to remove to Rich- 
mond, Ya., and become editor of the Watchman and Ob- > 
server. 



228 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



''The Southern Presbyterian Weekly/' 

After Mr. Gildersleeve's departure from Charleston, 
the Synod of Georgia, in 1846, determined to issue a suc- 
cessor to the Observer. Early in 1847, at a meeting in 
Milledgeville, the Rev. Washington Baird was appointed 
editor, and the above mentioned name chosen for the 
paper. The first number appeared at Milledgeville on 
the 25th of August. It was removed to Charleston at the 
end of 1852, and the first number from that office was 
issued January 5, 1853, Rev. Washington Baird still its 
editor, Baird and Erazer, proprietors, W. Y. Paxton, 
publisher. On April 6, 1854, the proprietorship was 
changed, and it passed into the hands of a considerable 
number of gentlemen in the different Presbyterian 
churches of the city; Rev. J. L. Kirkpatrick, D. D., edi- 
tor, and Rev. Edwin Cater, assistant editor. Mr. Cater 
withdrew December 7, 1854, and in July, 1857, Rev. B. 
E, Lanneau took his place. Dr. Kirkpatrick, being pastor 
of the Glebe Street church in Charleston, would not be- 
come editor without the assured help of some regular con- 
tributors, and the writer became one of these from May 4, 
1854. Dr. Kirkpatrick's editorship continued until the 
close of 1857. From that time the Rev. H. B. Cunning- 
ham became its editor and proprietor. Erom him it was 
purchased by the writer, and removed to Columbia, the 
first number appearing JsTovember 1, 1860. The Rev. 
A. A. Porter became its editor, and was to be supported 
Try the paper, and later the Rev. James Woodrow under- 
took to look after the accounts and finances, and for this 
service was admitted as part proprietor. Dr. "'kornwell 
became a frequent contributor, and, by his aid t id that of 
others, its eminent editor soon gave it a high eputation 
and a wide circulation. We made no money., however, 
and the war between the States coming on soon, it was 
kept up with great difficulty, until the burning of Colum- 
bia by William Tecumseh Sherman gave it a death blow. 
Dr. Woodrow had the courage to revive the paper in 
1865, overcoming many and very great difficulties. His 
brother-in-law, Rev. Dr. Joseph R. Wilson, a] id Jesse A. 
Ansley, Esq., of Augusta, with the writer, became his 
coadjutors. The expense of its publication under the cir- 



LITERARY WORK. 



229 



cumstances was very heavy for men whom the war had 
ruined. The first named two were obliged soon to retire, 
and, after a very few years, the writer was also obliged to 
forsake its courageous reestablisher. But he was deter- 
mined that it should live, and, for more than a quarter of 
a century, continued its publication, editing it with con- 
summate ability. The Rev. W. S. Bean then became its 
proprietor and editor, removed it to Clinton, S. C, but, 
after a few years, gave place to J. F. and W. S. Jacobs, as 
proprietors and publishers. The Rev. J. Ferdinand Ja- 
cobs is its editor-in-chief, with seven associate editors in 
various Synods. It bids fair to run an honorable and 
useful career. 

"The Southern Presbyterian Review/' 

In June, 1847, Rev. Dr. George Howe, with Dr. Thorn- 
well and the Rev. B. M. Palmer, established the Southern 
Presbyterian Review in Columbia. The Rev. Dr. 
Thomas Smyth, of Charleston, assisted them greatly 
from the beginning, and constantly, down to the time of 
his lamented death. The writer's name also appears in 
the first volume, and he soon became co-editor and fre- 
quent contributor, and continued as such down to the end 
of the thirty-sixth volume, when the publication was sus- 
pended. On the list of its frequent contributors appear 
the names of Dabney, Leighton Wilson, J. A. Waddell, 
Girardeau, Lef evre, Peck, Stuart Robinson, A. W. Miller, 
A. A. Porter, James A. Lyon, Enoch Pond, J. T. L. Pres- 
ton and Bocock ; whilst there were also occasional articles 
from R. J. Breckinridge, Professor Joseph LeConte, Pro- 
fessor Gildersleeve, J. R. Wilson, Barbour, Quarles, J. L. 
Martin, S. T. Martin, Samuel M. Smith, B. B. Warfield 
and other well-known and valuable writers, too numerous 
to be named. Running from 1847 to 1885, its thirty- 
six volumes cover a very interesting term of years. Polit- 
ical, educational, moral, ecclesiastical, theological discus- 
sions were rife in those times. The war was coming on, 
and the ideas that led to it stirred men's minds and hearts. 
The Presbyterian Church, like other evangelical denomi- 
nations, was to be divided. A branch of it was to arise 
more sound in its theology and more scriptural in its 



230 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



order than its elder sister had come to be. The organiza- 
tion and the progress of this new body and the history of 
its revision of the Form of Government, Rules of Disci- 
pline and Directory of Worship must needs provoke con- 
sideration and discussion. All these subjects are ably 
treated by different writers in successive volumes of the 
Southern Presbyterian Review, and they who possess a 
full set of this venerable publication know how to value it. 

Teaching Church History and Church Polity. 

I gave instruction, chiefly by text-books, on these sub- 
jects for seventeen years in the Theological Seminary at 
Columbia. "Whatever I know of either I learned by 
teaching it. When, after a four years' course, I grad- 
uated at Princeton Theological Seminary, I had, like the 
graduates ordinarily, only a smattering of all the differ- 
ent subjects there so ably taught. It cannot well be 
otherwise for the ordinary student. The course of in- 
struction is altogether too wide to be thoroughly taken in 
during three years. Twelve years' residence as a mis- 
sionary among the Armenians and other Christian 
churches of the East added something, of course, to my 
knowledge of these subjects ; but it was as a professor in 
the Seminary I became really a student of them. The 
truth is, the best way to learn anything is to begin to 
teach it. To educate means to educe, that is, to draw 
forth or lead forth. For the teacher to draw forth de- 
pends very much upon the scholar; but every earnest 
teacher will necessarily educate, that is, lead forth, his 
own mind. I know I myself learned a good many things 
during these seventeen years of teaching, but how much 
T taught my classes I cannot guess. This much I know 
well, however : woe to the Presbyterian minister who 
imagines that he knows it all when he has gone through 
a full course at the Seminary, and does not then begin in 
earnest to teach himself all he can possibly learn during 
his whole ministerial life on every part of his course at 
the Seminary! 

Text-Books oe Church History. 

Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History is a learned and very 
valuable work, but I soon abandoned it as my text-book. 



SEMIXARY LIFE. 



231 



although, as I have been credibly informed, Addison 
Alexander said that, after trying a good many others, he 
came back to Mosheim, as, on the whole, the best text-book 
for his nse. One great objection to it was its chopping np 
arbitrarily into successive centuries a history which has 
a continuous life, and which should run on in one con- 
tinuous course. His treatment of the subject as to a cer- 
tain round of points in every particular century is calcu- 
lated to be wearisome to the student. Moreover, his work 
is confined to the Christian church, whereas, since the 
church began at the very fall of man, its history should 
also begin there. Professor Kurtz's Manual of Sacred 
History and his text-book of church history, taken to- 
gether, enabled me to cover the whole history from the 
very beginning. His Manual carries the student briefly, 
but instructively, through the Old Testament and down to 
the coming of Christ. His second work is also a brief, but 
a sufficient, guide down to the Reformation, and from the 
Eeformation almost to the present time. But Professor 
Kurtz is a Lutheran, and therefore his history must fail 
on certain points to be satisfactory to a Calvinistic 
teacher. Another extremely valuable text-book of church 
history I found in Killen's Ancient Church : Its History, 
Doctrine, Worship and Constitution, Traced for the 
First Three Hundred Years. The author of this most 
valuable work was Dr. William Killen, professor of Eccle- 
siastical Polity and Pastoral Theology, Belfast, Ireland. 
This work was published by Charles Scribner in 1859, 
and formed for the student of Church History a capital 
introduction to the subject of Church Polity. 

Text-Books ox Church Polity. 

Bannerman's Church of Christ is a valuable work on 
Church Government, and both interested and profited my 
classes. 

The Assertion of the Government of the Church of 
Scotland by Gillespie, perhaps the very foremost man in 
the Westminster Assembly, although the youngest, was 
also introduced to my classes, and was very useful to 
them. 

But when I began my life in the Seminary, Dr. Thorn- 



232 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



well said that lie was carrying his classes in Theology 
through the first three books of Calvin's Institutes, and 
proposed that I should make the fourth book a text-book 
on the subject of Church Polity and the Sacraments, 
"for," said he, "I do believe in Calvin's doctrine of the 
sacrament." I acted on his suggestion, and made The 
Institutes the foundation of my instructions on those sub- 
jects, until his lamented death, in 1863, necessarily broke 
up the arrangement. 

What Calvin says on the first of these two topics is 
briefly, but very strongly, set forth. The principles he 
lays down are taken directly from the Scriptures, and 
whoever masters his statement of them must needs be 
both a sound and well furnished Presbyterian. 

Part I. — Calvin on Church Government. 

The whole treatise is in three parts : First, The Church, 
in thirteen chapters; second, The Sacraments, six chap- 
ters; third, Civil Government, one chapter. 

Of the thirteen chapters about the Church, the first 
three portray the true church of God as set forth in the 
Scriptures, but they also present to us, by way of con- 
trast, a very striking and vivid picture of the apostate 
church of Rome. The Fourth Chapter furnishes Calvin's 
account of the primitive church. 

In the Fifth. Chapter he describes how utterly the 
papacy has corrupted the original form of government; 
in the sixth he makes plain from the Scriptures how base- 
less is the fabric of the Poruish See ; and in the seventh 
he traces the beginning and rise of the pontificate, until it 
reached a point where the liberty of the church was de- 
stroyed in the complete overthrow of all church rule. 
These three chapters I pass entirely over as not indispen- 
sable to a setting forth of Calvin's views of church gov- 
ernment, which is all that I propose. This omission of 
what he says about Pomish errors I shall freely make in 
all the remaining chapters wherever it occurs. 

Chapter Eight treats of Church Power as to Articles of 
Faith under the three heads, Doctrine, Legislation, and 
Jurisdiction. The Ninth Chapter discusses the Councils 
of the Church and their authority to deliver dogmas. 



CALVIN" S INSTITUTES. 



233 



Chapter Ten treats of the Law-making Power. Chapter 
Eleven treats of the J urisdiction of the Church. Chapter 
Twelve treats of the Discipline of the Church, and its use 
in censures and excommunication. Chapter Thirteen 
treats of Vows and the clanger of entanglement by them. 

As to the sacraments, I shall, in like manner, aim only 
at a summary of Calvin's doctrine, not pretending to dis- 
cuss all that Eome has invented about the sacraments. 

The hrst of these thirteen chapters on the Church be- 
gins by stating the church's relation to God. She is an 
institute established by him for the nourishment of our 
faith. Then follows the statement of the church's relation 
to us. She is our mother, of whom we are born and by 
whom Ave are nourished, trained and governed until we 
are divested of mortal flesh. 

In the very outset we here find Calvin deducing from 
Scripture the principle of jus divinum presbyterii. God 
"has appointed pastors and teachers. He has invested 
them with authority (eos auctoritate instruxit) They 
get it from him and not from the people. Certainly, it is 
incredible that God, who is a jealous God, should be in- 
different to the order of his church, or that Christ should 
be a king, and not reveal any organization for his king- 
dom. 

He goes on to teach that the church is to be considered 
in two aspects, one as visible, the other as invisible, and 
that God has never had but one church on the earth, being 
the one true body of the one true Head, J esus Christ. 

He then proceeds to teach from Scripture that the 
church, even considered as visible, is our mother ; is to be 
had in great reverence ; has the word and the sacraments 
lodged with her ; that, apart from this word and these 
sacraments, there is no ordinary possibility of salvation, 
so that abandonment of the visible church is sin, and if 
unrepentecl, will be fatal; to depart from her is to go 
away from the truth which alone can save; for it is to 
separate from a body of which Christ is the Head. 

Still further it is deduced from Scripture that we must 
submit to be trained in and by the visible church ; that 
the conflict of the ungodly in all ages has been against 
being thus trained ; that to neglect this public ministry 



234 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



for private reading of the word is to dissolve communion 
\ with the church ; that the communion of saints is de- 
stroyed unless, with one consent, we observe the order 
God has appointed in his church for learning and making 
progress ; that, to attempt any worship not ordered by 
God, is to introduce adventitious fictions (adventitia fig- 
menta), one church after one sort and another after an- 
other, all alike unwarranted and unacceptable, to the de- 
struction of church unity, because that requires the strict 
observance of the appointed order. 

In Part Second of this First Chapter, Calvin treats 
more fully of the church in the two aspects in which the 
Scriptures present her. First, the true invisible church 
consists of all the saints or real believers now on the 
earth, and also all the elect from the beginning. The 
visible church consists of the whole body of those who 
profess and observe the Christian religion, and their chil- 
dren. This body contains many hypocrites, tolerated for 
I the present. Calvin teaches that we are to believe the 
invisible, but venerate the visible and cultivate her com- 
munion. God has given us marks by which to know the 
visible church, not applicable to individuals, but only to 
bodies. Tor individuals we are to exercise the judgment 
of charity, because the most abandoned and despaired of 
are sometimes by his grace recalled to life. 

The marks of a true visible church are the word 
preached and heard sincerely, and the sacraments ad- 
ministered in their integrity. Any ecclesiastical body 
which shows these marks we must accept, for Christ has 
promised to be there, and that his word shall produce 
fruit. Thus we apply the marks to churches, but indi- 
viduals we must treat as brethren, until legitimately de- 
prived of a place among the people of God. 

In Part Third of this First Chapter, Calvin treats of 
The Necessity of Cleaving to the Church Catholic and of 
The Refutation of Schismatics. The church catholic 
(that is, universal) consists of the multitude of professors 
in all nations. 

The foundation of this necessity is the value God sets 
upon communion with his church. No man may with 
impunity spurn her authority, or reject her admonitions, 



CALVIN S INSTITUTES. 



235 



or resist her counsels, or make sport of her censures, far 
less revolt from her and violate her unity. Whoso con- 
tumaciously alienates himself from any church in which 
true ministry and sacraments are maintained, God re- 
gards as a deserter of religion. To violate her authority he 
considers the impairing of his own. She is called a House 
of God/ 7 "Pillar and ground of the truth," "Spouse of 
Christ,'' "His body," "His fullness." To forsake her is 
to aim at destroying his truth, and is a perfidious viola- 
tion of the sacred marriage he has condescended to con- 
tract with us. 

The constant effort of Satan is to delete and efface these 
marks, formerly by causing the disappearance of preach- 
ing, latterly by bringing the ministry into contempt. He 
refers here to Papists on the one hand and Anabaptists on 
the other. 

We are never to discard a church where pure ministry 
of word and sacraments exist, though it may teem with 
numerous faults ; for every defect of doctrine is not 
fatal, e. g., the doctrine of intermediate state is not vital, 
like that of the Divinity of Christ. We must overlook 
some defects, otherwise we shall love no church at all, 
since there is no man not involved in some mists of igno- 
rance. Yet we must not patronize minute errors, but 
strive to remove and correct in an orderly way. 

Of errors in conduct we must be still more tolerant, not 
like Cathari and Donatists of, old, or Anabaptists later. 

In the fifteen succeeding sections of this chapter Calvin 
there states, and very conclusively refutes from Scrip- 
ture, all schismatical objections to his doctrine made by 
the ancient Cathari, Donatists and Novatians. 

Chapter Second presents a comparison of a false and 
the true church. First, it gives a description of a spuri- 
ous church, with refutation of its errors. Next there is 
given answer to popish accusation against the orthodox, 
of heresy and schism, with a description of churches then 
under the papacy. 

In the preceding chapter it was shown that wherever 
the word and sacraments are administered entire and un- 
impaired, no errors of conduct or no trifling defects of ad- 
ministration should make us regard it as spurious. 



236 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



Trilling errors are such as do not corrupt fundamental 
doctrine or impair the institution of the sacrament; but 
when falsehood forces its way into the citadel, the church 
dies as certainly as when a man's throat is cut. In Ephe- 
sians ii. 20, the church is built on the- foundation of the 
apostles and prophets, but if the foundation is destroyed, 
the church must be subverted. Contrariwise, in 1 Tim- 
othy iii. 15, the church is the pillar and ground of the 
truth ; that is to say, the church upholds and holds forth 
the truth ; the church is a lighthouse ; but there is no 
church where, instead of light shining from the top, lying 
is in the ascendancy. 

Xow, under the papacy, instead of the ministry of the 
word, there is a government which extinguishes or sup- 
presses light ; instead of the Lord's supper, the foulest 
sacrilege ; instead of the worship of God, a mass of in- 
tolerable superstition. So, if we decline a fatal share in 
such wickedness, we run no risk of separating ourselves 
from the true church. 

But the papists claim that theirs is the only church in 
the world, and all who depart are schismatics or heretics. 
Their proof is a perpetual succession of bishops — men 
who of old founded churches, and shed their blood as 
martyrs, of whom old annals in Italy, Gaul and Spain 
tell, and that Irenseus, Tertullian, Origen and Augustine 
and others valued this succession so highly. But I ask 
them, why not quote Africa, Egypt and all Asia ? They 
answer, in them the succession was broken. So it is the 
succession on which they build. Then I ask them, why 
not acknowledge the Greeks who have the succession ? 
They answer, the Greeks, by revolt from the apostolic see, 
have lost their privilege. But do not those much more 
deserve to lose it who revolt from Christ '? 

The pretence of Rome is like that of the Jews, who, be- 
cause of their having the temple ceremonies and priest- 
hood, were confident they were the true church ; but when 
they corrupted his worship, God removed it elsewhere. 
Now, if he forsook his own temple for this, much more 
will he not abide with these who have only the semblance 
of a church. Paul, in Romans ix.— xii., says that the Jews, 
being enemies of the truth, were no longer God's people 



CALVIN^ INSTITUTES. 



237 



or church. Succession is of no value where conduct does 
not correspond, and posterity is deprived of all honor 
when they revolt from their originals. Caiaphas was no 
true successor of Aaron, nor Caligula, Eero, or Helio- 
gabalus of Brutus, Scipio, or Camillas. Of all places, it is 
most absurd in the government of the church to put suc- 
cession in persons. The fathers appealed to by the papacy 
always condemn new error by pointing out how it was 
opposed to the doctrine of the apostles. In fine, the 
papists have substituted for the spouse of Christ a vile 
prostitute. 

It is by a test which is unequivocal, distinctly visible, 
infallible and indispensable, that Christ points out his 
church, viz., his word and sacraments. He says, "Every 
one that is of the truth heareth my voice." Moreover, he 
tells us his church is founded, not on the judgment of men 
or on priesthood, but is built on the foundation of the 
apostles and prophets. Thus we are enabled to distin- 
guish infallibly Babylon from Jerusalem, and a con- 
spiracy of Satan from the church of Christ. 

They charge us with heresy and schism ; but they are 
heretics who dissent from the church, and they are schis- 
matics who destroy its unity? for the church is held to- 
gether by sound doctrine and brotherly charity. Augus- 
tine says heresy breaks the first of these two bonds, and 
schism the second; but the second depends on the first. 
When Paul exhorts to unity, he makes the foundation of it 
to be one Lord, one faith, one baptism ; and when he ex- 
horts to be of one mind, it is the mind of Christ, teaching 
us that where the word of the Lord is absent it is a faction 
of the ungodly. 

Cyprian places unity in the head — one root, many 
branches ; one fountain, many streams ; one sun, many 
rays. Cyprian constantly calls us back to the Head. 
Heresy comes from forsaking the Head. 

As to our being schismatics, they expelled us with 
anathemas, just as the apostles were put out of the syna- 
gogues, which then were yet lawful churches. But sup- 
pose, not being excommunicated, any have withdrawn 
from Home : they are not schismatics, because it behooved 
to forsake her to set near to Christ. 



238 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



How shall we compare Rome with Israel as delineated 
by the prophets % That was bad enough ; this is far 
worse. That was partly apostate, but God, in mercy, still 
continued there his word and sacraments. They still had 
doctrine in the law, with the ministry of prophets and 
priests and circumcision. But who can give the name of 
church to this body, where the word and ministry are 
totally destroyed \ 

The defection amongst Jews was gradual, and not 
so rapid in Judah as in Israel; but in both by the 
same means, viz., corrupting worship by superstitious 
1 additions after becoming degenerate by superstitious 
opinions. In Judah remained a true church as long as 
the doctrine of the law, the priesthood and the rites God 
had established continued there. In Judah, some kings 
wicked, some theocratic ; in Israel, matters bad before 
Ahab, worse afterwards — and all the kings idolatrous. 

Papists must admit that things are as bad with them 
as with Israel under Jeroboam, idolatry grosser, doctrine 
impurer. They make two demands on us : first, join with 
their prayers, sacrifices, etc. ; secondly, give to their 
church the honor due to Christ's church. In answer to the 
first demand, Calvin admits that the prophets did not sep- 
arate from temple worship in Jerusalem ; but they were 
not compelled there to join in anything God had not insti- 
tuted. In Rome we must partake of idolatry. A fair 
comparison would be the worship of the Romish church 
with that of Israel under Jeroboam. Circumcision re- 
mained, also sacrifices and the law; yet, because of in- 
vented and forbidden modes of worship (commentitios 
ac vetitos cultus), God disapproved of all done there. 
Show us one prophet or pious man that once worshipped 
at Bethel. 

It would be still more difficult to comply with the sec- 
ond demand, for, considering the church as one whose 
judgment we must revere, whose authority we must bow 
to, whose admonitions we must obey, whose discipline we 
must dread and whose communion we must religiously 
cultivate, if we call theirs the church, then we must yield 
subjection and obedience. Calvin willingly yields to 
them only what prophets yielded to Judah and Israel in 



calvin's institutes. 



239 



their day (when their case was not so bad as Rome's), viz., 
that these meetings were profane conventicles, to assent 
to which was to abjure God. If those were churches, then 
Elijah, Micaiah, etc., in Israel, and the like in Judah, 
were aliens from God. If those were churches, then the 
church is no more the pillar and ground of truth. Meet- 
ings of papists cannot be called churches because then the 
keys of the kingdom would be with them, and what they 
bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. If they are 
churches, then no badge remains to distinguish meetings 
of the faithful from conventions of Turks. 

Still, we deny not to Rome vestiges of the church as in 
Israel. God's covenant stood by its own strength, even 
when it received no support from his people ; his faith was 
not obliterated by their perfidy; circumcision was still 
a true sign and sacrament, and their children he called 
his own. So in Gaul, Italy, Germany and other lands, 
we find baptism and some, other remains of the church. 

So, then, we deny the name of the church to the papacy, 
but we deny not that there are churches amongst them. 
Antichrist is in the temple of God, and the Pontiff is 
leader and standard-bearer of that wicked kingdom. His 
kingdom is such as not to destroy either the name of 
Christ or of his church. Churches there are which, by 
sacrilegious impiety, he has profaned, by cruel domina- 
tion oppressed, by deadly doctrines poisoned and almost 
slain, where Christ lies half buried, the gospel suppressed, 
piety put to flight, and worship of God almost abolished. 
They are called churches because their Lord preserves 
some remains of his people, some symbols of his church ; 
yet they want the form of a legitimate assembly; they 
represent Babylon rather than the holy city of God. 

The third chapter treats of the office-bearers of the 
church, their election and office. 1, Preliminary remarks 
on the usefulness and necessity of church officers (Sec. 
1-3) ; 2, The persons fulfilling : these offices (Sec. 4-10) ; 
3, Calling and ordination of office-bearers (Sec. 10-16). 

Preliminary Remarks. 
God might have instructed men directly, but he has 
chosen to do it through the ministry of some of them- 



240 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



selves. Thus he shows us his condescension, making men 
his oracles, and from their mouths, as from a sacred tem- 
ple, giving forth his instructions. He would train us to 
docility. We are to hear his word from his servants as 
though from himself. He would also bind men in mutual 
charity. Some of us are to be teachers, others disciples. 
To deposit with men the doctrine of eternal life and sal- 
vation, that it might be communicated from one to the 
other, was to bind men together in the strongest bond of 
unity. 

The value to the church of this ministry appears in 
this, that by it Christ fills all things to his church. By it 
the church is edified and grows. It is more useful to her 
than meat and drink and light to mortal life. They plot 
ruin who would abolish this order and government. 

The Scriptures set forth the dignity of this ministry 
thus, "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of 
him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace:" 
"Ye are the light of the world and the salt of the earth :" 
"Who heareth you heareth me." For the enlightenment 
of Cornelius an angel is sent from heaven, but only to tell 
him to send to Joppa for Peter. Similarly, when Christ 
appears to Paul at the gate of Damascus, instead of in- 
structing him with his own voice, he tells him to go to the 
city and wait until a man named Ananias shall come and 
tell him what to do. 

The Pebsosts Fulfilling Church Offices. 

These are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and 
v; teachers. Of these only the two last are ordinary and 
permanent. The others were raised up at the beginning 
hy the Lord, and still are raised up as becomes necessary. 
The apostles were men sent forth to preach to all the 
world, and lay everywhere the foundations of the church. 
Prophets were not all the interpreters of the divine will, 
but only such of them as excelled by special revelation. 
The evangelists were inferior in rank to the apostles, but 
next to them in office, and acted as their substitutes, such 
as Luke, Timothy, Titus, and perhaps also the seventy. 
These three are not to be perpetual officers, but only to 
<endure so long as churches were to be formed among the 



CALVIN S INSTITUTES. 



241 



Gentiles or transferred from Moses to Christ. But I 
deny not that God raised up some such afterwards, as 
has been done in our time — apostles, or at least evan- 
gelists, to bring back the church from the revolt of Anti- 
christ. The office I call extraordinary, because it has no 
place in churches duly constituted. Next come pastors 
and teachers, permanent officers, with whom the church 
<;an never dispense. Calvin says he thinks the difference 
between them is that teachers preside not over discipline, 
nor sacraments, nor admonition, nor exhortation, but 
only see to the interpretation of the Word. He seems to 
have in mind the professor in a theological school. 

Thus classing the evangelist with the apostle and the 
teacher with the prophet, we have two like offices, corres- 
ponding in a manner to each other. The prophetic office 
was the more excellent because of inspiration, but the 
teacher's office had almost the same nature and altogether 
the same end. In like manner, the twelve excel all others 
in rank and dignity; for although, from the nature of 
the service and the etymology of the title, all ministers 
of the church (ministri ecclesiastici) may properly be 
called apostles, because they too are men sent by the Lord, 
and are his messengers, yet, because the twelve had to 
deliver a new and extraordinary message, they and Paul 
had to be distinguished by a peculiar title. The same 
name, indeed, is given by Paul to Andronicus and Junia, 
because they were of note among the apostles ; but when he 
would speak strictly, he confines it to the original order ; 
and this is the common use of Scripture. Still, pastors 
(except that each has the government of a particular 
church assigned to him) have the same function as apos- 
tles. The nature of this function let us now see more 
clearly. 

When our Lord sent forth the apostles, he commis- 
sioned them to preach the gospel and baptize believers. 
He had previously commanded them to administer the 
Lord's supper. All these things are enjoined upon those 
who succeed to the apostolic office. Such as neglect these 
duties falsely pretend to be successors of the apostles. As 
to the duty of pastors, Paul says they are ministers of 
Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God, that is, of 



242 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



the sacraments. He says the bishops must hold fast the 
faithful word. But he also says that pastors are to 
preach from house to house as well as publicly, and quotes 
his own example, speaking to the Ephesian elders. In 
short, what apostles do to the whole world is to be done by 
the pastor for a single church. But he is also to meet in 
counsel with other pastors, to settle disturbances, and 
consider the general interests of the church. At the same 
time, each one must have his proper duty assigned, not 
flocking together promiscuously nor capriciously leaving 
the churches vacant. And this arrangement is of divine 
authority, for Paul and Barnabas ordained elders in every 
church, and Titus in every city. The pastor, then, is not 
(glebae addictus) astricted to the soil, and unable to move 
elsewhere, only this must be regulated, not by himself 
for his own advantage, but by public authority for the 
good of the church. 

In giving the name of bishops, presbyters, pastors and 
ministers indiscriminately to those who govern churches, 
Calvin says he has done it on the authority of Scripture^ 
which uses the words as synonymous. He shows this by 
repeated references to Scripture, as to Titus i. 5, 7 ; 
Philippians i. 1, and Acts xx. 17. 

"Here now," says Calvin, "it is to be observed that we 
have hitherto enumerated those offices only which consist 
in the ministry of the word ; nor does Paul make mention 
of any others in the passage which we have quoted from 
the fourth chapter of Ephesians at the eleventh verse. 
But in Romans xii. 7, and 1 Corinthians xii. 28, Paul 
enumerates other offices, some of them evidently tem- 
porary. There are two, however, of perpetual duration. 
These relate to government and care of the poor. By 
these governors I understand seniors selected from the 
people to unite with the bishops in pronouncing censures 
and exercising discipline ; for this is the only meaning 
which can be given to the passage, 'He that ruleth with 
diligence' (Romans xii. 8). From the beginning, there- 
fore, each church had its senate, composed of pious, grave 
and venerable men, in whom was lodged the power of 
correcting faults. Of this power we shall afterwards 
speak. Moreover, experience shows that this arrange- 



CALVIN's INSTITUTES. 



2-13 



ment was not confined to one age, and therefore we are to 
regard the office of government as necessary for all ages." 

This is all that Calvin says about the ruling elder in 
this chapter, wherein he sets forth church government as 
revealed in the Scriptures. That the office is of divine 
right he has sufficiently declared in what he finds stated 
about governments in 1 Corinthians xii. 28. He has also 
quoted Acts xiv. 23, where we read that Paul and Barna- 
bas ordained elders in every church. It seems strange 
that he has not quoted 1 Timothy v. 17, where the apostle 
divides the bishop or presbyter or elder into two classes, 
one that rules and another that teaches as well as rules, 
the latter being the higher class, but the former being, no 
doubt, the aboriginal class. The elders at Derbe, Lystra 
and Iconium clearly were ruling elders ; they can hardly 
have been qualified to teach. Had Calvin directed his 
attention to 1 Timothy v. 17, he would probably have 
represented somewhat differently both the pastor and the 
teacher. 

Calvin next describes the deacons of the Xew Testa- 
ment church as of two classes, being so set forth, he says, 
in Romans xii. 8, "He that giveth" is the deacon who ad- 
ministers alms, and "he that sheweth mercy" is the one 
that waits on the poor and the sick. Of this latter kind 
were the widows mentioned in 1 Timothy v. 10. Such 
deacons as the apostolic church had, Calvin says, it be- 
comes us to have, which would give us the office of dea- 
coness. 

Evidently Calvin understands Acts vi. 3 as describing 
the first appearance of the deacon's office in the Christian 
church ; but another view is that there were deacons in 
the Jewish church, and transferred thence into the Chris- 
tian (Acts v. 6, 10). Acts vi. 3 only records Hellenistic 
deacons to satisfy the complaints that had arisen. It is 
significant that six of the seven had Greek names, being 
Hellenistic Jews, while the seventh was a proselyte of 
Antioch. 

The Calling and Ordination of Church Officers. 

All things must be done decently and in order; but 
nowhere, as respects the church, is this more important 



244 



MY LIFE AND TIMES 



than in determining the manner and mode of her govern- 
ment. Lest factions and turbulent men should rush in, 
it was expressly provided that every church officer must 
assume office only after election and call (Hebrews v. 4; 
Jeremiah xvii. 16). First, he must be duly called, and 
then he must voluntarily accept the call and enter on its 
duties. Thus Paul frequently asserts his call and his 
fidelity to it. If so great a minister of Christ as Paul 
needed to be called, how much more all ordinary men. 

The subject of the call Calvin treats under four heads, 
viz., who are to be appointed ministers, in what way, by 
whom, and with what ceremony. He treats here of the 
external call by the church, and says nothing of the secret 
call of God which is so necessary. 

What persons are to be elected bishops Paul tells us in 
1 Timothy iii. 1-7 ; Titus i. 7-9. The substance is, such 
as are of sound doctrine and holy life, with no notorious 
defect as would disgrace the ministry. The description 
of elders and deacons is altogether similar. 

In what way are they to be elected \ Here Calvin 
refers, not to the rite of choosing, but, as the business is 
most serious and important, to the religious forms to be 
observed in the election. Hence the faithful observed 
prayer and fasting when they elected presbyters, implor- 
ing from God, with anxious solicitude, the spirit of wis- 
dom and discernment. 

By whom are ministers to be chosen ? The apostles, 
being extraordinary officers, were appointed by our Lord 
himself. When the apostles desired to replace Judas, 
they did not absolutely choose, but only named, two men, 
and then cast lots, thus leaving the decision to the Lord. 
Thus Paul claims that he was made an apostle, not by 
men, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, and to 
prove it he could show the insignia of his apostleship. 

"But," continues Calvin, having in mind the fanatical 
Anabaptists, "no sober person will deny that the designa- 
tion of ordinary ministers is to be by man, as numerous 
scriptures teach. Even this extraordinary minister, the 
Apostle Paul, is subjected to the discipline of an ecclesi- 
astical call thus, 'Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the 
work whereunto I have called them' (Acts xiii. 2) ; for 



CAL VIX S INSTITUTES. 



245 



the Lord first declares that he has appointed Paul apostle 
to the Gentiles, and yet afterwards requires the church to 
set him apart. The same thing we may see in the election 
of Matthias." 

We must now consider whether the election of a min- 
ister is by the whole church, or only by his colleagues and 
the elders who preside over discipline, or whether he can 
be constituted by the authority of one man. Those who 
say by one man (that is, a diocesan bishop *) allege 
Titus's ordination of elders in every city and Timothy's 
laying hands on men. But neither Titus reigned at Crete 
nor Timothy at Ephesus.' They only presided in elections 
by the people. Roman historians often tell how the consul 
who held the comitia elected the new magistrates when he 
only received the suffrages presiding over the election by 
the people. It was in this way that Paul and Barnabas 
ordained elders in every church. They selected two, but 
the whole body, as was the custom of Greeks in elections, 
declared by a show of hands which of the two they wished 
to have. It is not credible that Paul conceded to Timothy 
and Titus more than he assumed to himself. We must 
not interpret the above passages so as to infringe upon 
the common right and liberty of the church. Cyprian is 
here quoted by Calvin to sustain this view. Indeed, we 
see that, by command of the Lord, the Levitical priest 
must be brought in view of the people before consecration. 
lYor was Matthias enrolled among the apostles, nor the 
seven deacons elected in any other way except at the sight 
and approval of the people. Other pastors, however, 
ought to preside over the election, lest any error should be 
committed by the general body, either through levity or 
bad passion or tumult. Calvin is strong against the one- 
man-power of rule. 

It remains to be considered with what ceremony min- 
isters are to be appointed. It is simply with the laying 
on of hands. Thus the Jews devoted anything. Thus 
Jacob, when he blessed the two sons of Joseph. Thus our 
Lord, when he blessed infants. Thus the Jews laid hands 
on their sacrifices. This simple rite signified that the 

*See Chap. IV., Sees. 10, 11: Chap. V., Sees. 2, 3; also, Calvin 
on Acts vi. 3; and Luther, torn. II., p. 374. 



246 



MY LIFE AMD TIMES. 



apostles devoted to the Lord him whom they admitted to 
the ministry. They observed the same ceremony in con- 
ferring the visible gifts of the Spirit. There is no fixed 
precept for ns to lay on hands; we only follow the ex- 
ample of the apostles. It is certainly useful by such a 
symbol to commend to the people the dignity of the min- 
istry ; and let him who is ordained with such a ceremony 
always remember that he is not his own, but devoted to 
the special service of the Lord. This ceremony of the 
Lord's own appointment cannot be a vain thing. 

The fourth chapter treats of the primitive church and 
church government before the papacy. First, it describes 
government in the primitive church, Sec. 1-10. Xext, 
the formal ordination of bishops and ministers, Sec. 
10-15. 

Government in the Primitive Church. 

Calvin will be found very charitable to the course of 
things in the primitive church, whose canons, he say-, 
contain almost nothing that was foreign to the sacred 
scriptures. His object being to draw a very strong con- 
trast between that church and the church of the papacy, he 
apologizes, as far as he can with a good conscience, for 
every early departure from the ways of the apostolic 
church. We should bear in mind that it is these early 
departures, which he called slight, which led the way to 
the more dreadful errors of the Romish church. He says 
they were sincerely desirous to do right, and they did not 
go much astray. For, he says, as we have shown that in 
scripture there are three kinds of ministers (trip! ices min- 
istros), so the early church distinguished all the ministry 
she had into three orders ; for from the order of the 
presbyters a part were chosen to be pastors and doctors, 
and to the other part was committed the censure of morals 
and discipline. To the deacons belonged the care of the 
poor and the dispensing of alms. "Readers and Acolytes" 
did not signify distinct offices, but were only persons in 
training for the service of the church. 

All, therefore, to whom the office of teaching was com- 
mitted they called presbyters ; and in each city these 
presbyters elected one to whom they gave the title of 



calvin's institutes. 



247 



bishop. The bishop, however, was not so superior in 
honor and dignity as to have dominion over his colleagues, 
but only to be like a president in an assembly, to bring 
matters before them, collect the opinions and preside. 
And the ancients themselves confess that this practice was 
introduced by human arrangement, according to the exi- 
gency of the times. Thus Jerome, on the Epistle to Titus, 
Chapter I., says, "A bishop is the same as a presbyter; 
and before dissensions were introduced into religion by 
the instigation of the devil, and it was said among the 
people, I am of Paul, and I of Cephas, churches were 
governed by a common council of presbyters. After- 
wards, that the seeds of dissension might be plucked up, 
the whole charge was devolved upon one. Therefore, as 
presbyters know that, by the custom of the church, they 
are subject to him who presides, so let bishops know that 
they are greater than presbyters more by custom than 
in consequence of our Lord's appointment, and that these 
must rule the church together." * 

We see evidently that what the author has especially in 
mind, as he describes the primitive church, is to show 
how it differed from the papal system, which began so 
early to be developed, even as Paul says, the mystery of 
iniquity was already working. Accordingly, we find Cal- 
vin saying at the beginning of Section II., "that all those 
to whom the office of teaching was committed they called 
presbyters." We know that they also called by that name 
all to whom was committed "the censure of manners and 
discipline," that is, all the ruling elders. For so Paul 
says in 1 Timothy v. 17, and so Calvin himself says in the 
first section of this chapter. There were others, then, 
whom they called presbyters, besides those to whom the 
office of teaching was committed. The reformer does not 
stop to make this plain, but what he has in mind is simply 
to show that presbyters from the beginning were not 
inferior to bishops ; for in fact "presbyter" and "bishop" 
in the scripture are interchangeable terms. 

It is possible, however, that in the form of expression 
used by Calvin in this case he means to intimate that, in 
the primitive church, through the ambition of the 



* The Latin says, "Et in commune debere ecclesiam regere." 



248 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



teachers, the name presbyter was soon confined to them, 
and the ruling elder early disappears, till in the sixteenth 
century he is exhumed by Calvin. 

Calvin proceeds to say that in another place Jerome 
shows how ancient the custom was of the presbyters ap- 
pointing one of themselves to be bishop. Jerome says 
that "at Alexandria, from the time of Mark the evangelist 
as far down as Heraclas and Dionysius" (middle of the 
third century) presbyters thus made the bishop to be of a 
higher rank than themselves. 

The reader will observe in what Jerome says, how soon 
the episcopate is developed over the presbyterate. It has 
already come to be a higher rank. 

Calvin continues, "Each city, therefore, had a college of 
presbyters, consisting of pastors and teachers. For they 
all performed for the people that office of teaching, exhort- 
ing and correcting, which Paul enjoins on bishops (Titus 
i. 9 ) ; and that they might leave a seed behind them, they 
made it their business to train younger men who had 
devoted themselves to the sacred warfare. Each presby- 
tery (collegia politiae), as I have said, merely to preserve 
order and peace, was under one bishop, who, though he 
excelled others in dignity, was subject to the meeting of 
the brethren. But if the district which was under his 
bishopric was too large for him to be able to discharge all 
the duties of bishop, presbyters were distributed over it 
in certain places, to act as his substitutes in minor mat- 
ters. These were called chorepiscopi — rural bishops." 

Calvin proceeds to say that the bishop, as well as pres- 
byters, was in the primitive church required to administer 
the word and sacraments. Here evidently, the reformer 
is striking at the Roman bishops, whose office was not 
preaching, but administering the affairs of a whole dis- 
trict. It soon became necessary, as we have seen, to have 
rural bishops appointed to assist him, for he has quit the 
word and sacraments and become just an exaggerated 
ruling elder. 

Calvin continues, "Only at Alexandria, where Arius 
had troubled the church, was it enacted that no presbyter 
should address the people ; and Jerome does not conceal 
his dissatisfaction with this merely local arrangement. 



calvin's institutes. 



249 



In all other portions of the church it certainly would have 
"been deemed monstrous for a bishop not to preach. Such 
was the strictness of primitive times. Not even in the 
time of Gregory, when the church had almost fallen, 
would any bishop have been tolerated who did not preach. 
Gregory says in his twenty-fourth epistle, the priest dies 
who does not preach. Elsewhere Gregory says, when 
Paul testifies his freedom from the blood of all men, he 
teaches that we who are called priests are murderers of 
souls if we see men perishing and do not warn them. If 
Gregory does not spare those who did their duty par- 
tially, as did the bishops of his time, what think you 
would he say to those who neglect it entirely, as Calvin 
meant to say was the case with the bishops of his time ? 
For a long time (says Calvin) it was held in the primitive 
church to be the first duty of a bishop to feed the people 
with the word of God. 

The Gregory above referred to was Gregory the Great, 
in the latter part of the sixth century, the man who sent 
missionaries to Britain to convert the Anglo-Saxons. 

Calvin continues, "As to the fact that each province 
had an archbishop among the bishops, and that by the 
Council of iSTice patriarchs were made superior to arch- 
bishops, it must be allowed that the design was for the 
preservation of discipline. " It must also be allowed, in 
treating of the subject here, that this practice was rare. 
The chief reason for the institution of these orders was 
that, when a matter could not be settled except by being 
referred to a provincial synod, if the magnitude of the 
question required it, patriarchs might be employed along 
with the synods to determine it, and from them there 
could be no appeal except to a general council. Some 
called this hierarchy — in my opinion a name not proper, 
certainly not found in scripture ; for the Holy Spirit 
never designed that any one should dream of domination 
in the church ; but, looking not at the term, but only at 
the thing, we must see that the ancient bishops had no 
wish to frame a churchy government different from what 
the word of God prescribes. 

Let the reader observe the characteristic sobriety and 
charitableness of the reformer. 



250 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES 



As to deacons, their office was as it had been under the 
apostles. For they received the annual revenues of the 
church and applied them to their true uses ; that is, partly 
to maintain ministers and partly to help the poor, under 
the direction of the bishop, to whom they made annual 
reports. The canons made this the duty of the bishop, but 
he performed this duty by the deacons who were under 
his direction. But the Council of Antioch ordained that 
the bishop who meddled with the effects of the church 
without the knowledge of the presbyters and deacons 
should be restrained. From many of the letters of Greg- 
ory it is evident that, even at that time, while otherwise 
ecclesiastical administrations were very irregularly dis- 
charged (ecclesiasticae ordinationes multum vitiatae 
erant), it was still the practice for the deacons to be. 
under the bishops, the stewards of the poor. Probably at 
first subdeacons assisted the deacons in the management 
of the poor. Archdeacons were afterwards appointed as 
the extent of the revenues increased; and Jerome says 
they already existed in his day. Then these took charge 
of the revenues, possessions and furniture, and daily of- 
ferings. We find Gregory saying to the Archdeacon Soli- 
tanus that the blame would be his if any of the goods of 
the church perished. Then the reading of the word to the 
people, and the giving of exhortation, was allowed them, 
and afterwards the giving of the cup in the sacred supper. 
This was done to make them respect their office, as being 
not a secular stewardship, but a spiritual function, dedi- 
cated to God. 

Hence we may judge what kind of distribution was 
made of ecclesiastical goods. You will learn, both from 
the decrees of synods and from other ancient writers, that 
all the possessions of the church were held to be the patri- 
mony of the poor. Accordingly, it is ever and anon 
sounded in the ears of bishops and of deacons : Remember 
that you are not handling your own, but what belongs to 
the poor ; if you dishonestly conceal or dilapidate it, you 
will be guilty of blood. Hence they are to distribute with 
the greatest care, as in the sight of God, and without re- 
spect of persons. Hence, also, by Chrysostom, Ambrose, 
Augustine, and other like bishops, those graver obtesta- 



calvin's institutes. 



251 



tions in which they assert their integrity before the peo- 
ple. But since it is just in itself, and also sanctioned by 
the Lord, that they that preach the gospel should live of the 
gospel, and since some presbyters in that age had become 
poor by consecrating all they had to God, aliment was 
afforded to the ministry, and yet the poor not neglected. 
Yet it was provided that the ministers were to live fru- 
gally and not in luxury. "For," says Jerome, "those 
clerics who have a sufficient patrimony commit sacrilege 
if they accept what belongs to the poor." 

But when at length, through cupidity and the depraved 
desires of some, bad examples had arisen, they had to 
frame canons correcting these evils, dividing the revenues 
of the church into four parts. They assigned one part to 
the clergy, a second to the poor, a third to the repair of 
churches and other edifices, and a fourth to the poor 
strangers; for although other canons attribute this last 
part to the bishop, it is not meant to be for his own use, but 
to enable him to use the hospitality which Paul enjoins. 
tSo is this canon interpreted by Gelasius and by Gregory. 
Gregory especially so explains it. 

Moreover, what was spent in the adorning of sacred 
things (in ornatum sacrorum) was at first very trifling; 
and even when the church had become somewhat more 
wealthy, all the money that was collected in such things 
(illic) was reserved for the poor when some great neces- 
sity should arise. Evidently Calvin here refers to silver 
and gold vessels, etc. He thus continues, "Cyril, when a 
famine prevailed in the province of Jerusalem, and the 
want could not otherwise be supplied, took the vessels and 
robes and sold them for the support of the poor Acacius, 
Bishop of Amida, when famine was destroying the Per- 
sians, assembled the clergy and delivered this noble ad- 
dress, 'Our God has no need of chalices or salvers, for he 
neither eats nor drinks.' Then he melts down the plate, 
and gave food and ransom to the sufferers. Jerome also 
tells how Exuperius, Bishop of Tholouse, though he car- 
ried the body of the Lord in a wicker basket and his 
"blood in a glass, suffered no poor man to be hungry. What 
I said of Acacius, Ambrose tells of himself. When the 
Arians assailed Ambrose for breaking down the sacred 



252 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



vessels for the ransom of captives, he demonstrated to 
them at great length how the sacraments stand in no need 
of gold, and their trne honor is in the ransom of captives. 
In a word, we see the exact truth of what he elsewhere 
says, viz., that whatever the church then possessed was the 
revenue of the needy, and that a bishop has nothing but 
what belongs to the poor. 

We have thus reviewed all the ecclesiastical offices of 
the primitive church. The others spoken of by ecclesias- 
tical writers were just preparations for office. Those 
good men thought it wise to have in training young per- 
sons who should succeed them, having dedicated them- 
selves, with the consent and authority of their parents, to 
this life. Their general name was that of clerks. I could 
wish that some more appropriate name had been given 
them, for this appellation had its origin in error, or at 
least improper feeling. Here the reformer seems to pass 
condemnation by inference upon the names clergy and 
clergymen, terms which certainly never should be used 
by thoughtful protestants. "The whole church/ 7 says 
Calvin, a is called by Peter (1 Peter v. 3) the Lord's clerus, 
that is, his inheritance and portion, which name should 
not be given to any class of church officers. But the in- 
stitution itself was most sacred, and valuable as a means 
of training up young ministers. First of all, they en- 
trusted them with the opening and shutting of the church 
doors, and so were called Ostiarii. ~Next came the Aco- 
lytes, who were followers of the bishop, always attending 
him wherever he went, that there might arise no suspicion, 
since a witness was always present. Then there were 
'readers,' who were to stand up and read the word to the 
people among whom they were to know and be known, and 
learn not to be ashamed when afterwards they were ad- 
mitted to be subdeacons." 

Ordination of Bishops and Ministers. 

As to the first two points, viz., the persons to be elected, 
and the manner of their election, the early church fol- 
lowed the apostles, meeting solemnly for the election, 
with earnest prayer to God, with examination into the 
life and doctrine of the candidates, only sometimes they 



CALVI^S institutes. 



253 



were more strict than Paul (1 Timothy iii. 2-8), and 
especially, in process of time, they exacted celibacy. As 
to the third point, viz., who should appoint the minister ? 
they departed from the apostolic rule, for anciently none 
were admitted without the consent of the whole people. 
Hence Cyprian apologizes for having appointed a reader 
without consulting the whole church, on the ground that 
he was to have a long probation, and only to an unimpor- 
tant office. Afterwards, in other orders also, except the 
episcopate, the people left the choice to the bishop and the 
presbyters, unless where new presbyters were appointed 
to parishes, in which case the express consent of the in- 
habitants of the place behooved to be given. 'Nov is it 
strange that the people should be indifferent to their own 
rights as to sub-deacons, for only after a long probation 
could he become deacon, and then, after another long pro- 
bation, presbyter ; for none were promoted who had not 
for many years been constantly under the eye of the peo- 
ple. There were also many canons for punishing their 
faults, so that the church need not be burdened with bad 
presbyters or deacons. Indeed, in the case of presbyters, 
the consent of the citizens was always required, as is at- 
tested by the canon ascribed to Anacletus. Moreover, 
all ordinations were at stated periods of the year, so that 
none might creep in stealthily. 

As to bishops, the people long retained their right to 
prevent any one being intruded on them. So the Council 
of Antioch ordained. Leo I. also carefully confirmed 
this. Hence various passages like this, "Let him be 
elected whom the clergy and the people, at least the ma- 
jority, demand. 77 Very careful were the holy fathers that 
this liberty of the people should be preserved, as appears 
in the case of Nectarius, whom a general council at Con- 
stantinople would not ordain without the approbation 
of the whole clergy and people, as is testified by their 
letter to the Roman Synod. So, when a bishop would 
name his own successor, he must get the consent of the 
whole people. Augustine not only gives an example of 
this, but the very form, in the nomination of Eradius. 
Theodoret, after relating that Peter, who was appointed 
by Athanasius his successor, had the acclamation of the 



254 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES 



whole people, also adds that the sacerdotal order rati- 
fied it. 

Indeed, it was decreed by the Council of Laodicea, and 
I admit on the best grounds, that ordination should not 
be left to the crowd: for it seldom happens that many 
heads can settle a matter well. It generally holds true, 
"Incertum scindi studio, in contraria vulgus" — opposing 
wishes rend the fickle crowd. Accordingly, first, the 
clergy alone selected, then presented the man to the mag- 
istrate, or senate, or chief men. These, after deliberation, 
put their signature to the election if approved ; otherwise 
they chose another. The matter was then laid before the 
multitude, who, though not bound by all this, were less 
able to act tumultuously. Or, if the matter began with 
the multitude, the wishes of the people having been thus 
heard, the clergy at length elected. Leo said, '"The wishes 
of the citizens, the testimonies of the people, the choice 
of the honorable, the election of the clergy, are to be 
waited for." Thus, all that the Council of Laodicea de- 
signed was that the clergy and rulers were not to allow 
themselves to be carried away by the rash multitude, but 
rather, by their prudence and gravity, to repress, if need- 
ful, their foolish desires. 

This mode of election was still in force in the time of 
Gregory (A. D. 590). Whenever a new bishop was to be 
elected, he would consult the clergy, the magistrates and 
the people, and also the governor. When one Constantius 
was made bishop of ALilan, but, because of the insurgence 
of the barbarians of the north, many Milanese had fled to 
Genoa, Gregory held that the election was not lawful 
until these refugees were called together and gave their 
consent. "Indeed," says Calvin, "not five hundred years 
ago. Pope Nicholas fixed the election of a pontiff thus: 
first, the cardinals must precede : then the clergy, and 
then the people of Koine." And then he recites the de- 
cree of Leo. lately quoted by me. But if the election was 
to be out of the city, his order was that some of the people 
must go and ratify. - The suffrage of the emperor, as far 
as I can understand, was required only at Rome and Con- 
stantinople, being seats of empire. In Gratian's De- 
cretals Ave read that canonical elections are not to be 



CALVI^S INSTITUTES. 



255 



vacated at the word of a king. Still, it is one thing to de- 
prive the church of her right of deciding an election, and 
quite another thing to assign due honor to a king or em- 
peror. We see how far Calvin's conservatism carries 
him. 

"It remains now," he says, "to speak of the ceremony 
of ordination or consecration in the ancient church. The 
Latins called it hy those names, but the Greeks give it 
two names, the one signifying the lifting up of hands in 
voting, the other the laying on of hands upon the head. 
A decree of the Council of Nice (in the fourth century) 
requires the metropolitans and all the bishops of the prov- 
ince to be present ; but if some were necessarily hin- 
dered, at least three must attend, and the absent must 
signify assent by letter. But strict examination into doc- 
trine and life must precede ordination. It appears from 
Cyprian's words that of old the ordination took place at 
the same time as the election, so that the presence of 
bishops might prevent any disorder by the crowd in the 
matter of their election." 

Yet a different custom gradually gained ground; for 
the elected began to go to the metropolitan, to get ordina- 
tion by him. Gradually a still worse custom prevailed, 
owing to the increased authority of the Romish See, 
which was for all the bishops of Italy to go to Rome for 
ordination. Thus only a few cities maintained their an- 
cient rights, for example, Milan. 

The only form used was the laying on of hands. I do 
not read of any other ceremony, except that the bishop 
wore some dress to distinguish him from the other pres- 
byters. Presbyters and deacons also received laying on of 
hands, but each bishop, with his college of presbyters, or- 
dained his own presbyters. The same act was performed 
by all, but because the bishop presided, it came at last to 
be called his ordination. Here, then, is still to be seen, in 
this description by Calvin, the remains of the original 
ordination of ruling elders by the pastor and the other 
elders, and how gradually prelacy came to take the place 
of scriptural presbytery. 

The eighth chapter introduces the third part of Cal- 
vin's subject, viz., Church Power, as existing either in 



256 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



individual bishops, or in councils, whether provincial or 
general. Nothing is said here about particular councils, 
such as church sessions or presbyteries, but he will speak 
of them in the next chapter, and show that they have the 
very same kind of authority as the higher courts of the 
church, or even as to what he means by the general coun- 
cil. He says, "I speak of spiritual power, such as belongs 
properly to the church, and which consists either in doc- 
trine, or in jurisdiction, or in enacting laws. As to the 
subject of doctrine there are two divisions, viz., the 
authority of delivering dogmas and of interpreting 
them." 

Calvin thus, at the very outset of this chapter on power, 
makes the distinction between several power and joint 
power ; for church power in one form belongs to indi- 
vidual ministers and elders, but another form of it is con- 
fined to assemblies of church rulers. He pauses here to 
remind the reader that church power, whatever we may 
say about it, must always be exercised for edification and 
not for destruction. To use it lawfully we must remem T 
ber that we are only servants of Christ, and also servants 
of his people. Now, the only way to edify the church is 
to magnify Christ, and always hold him up as its only 
Lord; for not of any other, but only of Christ, was it 
said, "Hear him." Ecclesiastical power is not, then, to 
be malignantly* adorned (maligne ornanda), but is to 
be confined within certain limits, as described by prophets 
and apostles, so as not to be drawn hither and thither at 
the caprice of men ; for, conceding to men all the power 
they would like to assume, it is easy to see it must soon de- 
generate into tyranny. 

Thus Calvin here enunciates several principles which 
are very dear to all Presbyterians. The first is, that 
church power is all spiritual. Secular things, political 
matters, and scientific questions, are all beyond its sphere. 
Another is, it is never for destruction, but always only for 
edification. It acts always in love and for good to the 
offender. It inflicts no pains or penalties except such as 
are spiritual. A third one is, it is never magisterial, but 



* I so translate this word on the authority of Facciolati. 



calvin's institutes. 



257 



only spiritual, and by the authority and for the honor of 
Christ. 

When Calvin divides the power of doctrine into de- 
livery of dogmas and the interpretation of them, he sets 
forth by the first what individual bishops may do, as well 
as councils ; and when he speaks of interpreting dogmas, 
I think he has in view especially the duty of applying the 
principles of truth to various questions that come before 
courts of the church. 

In like manner, Gillespie distinguishes between the 
power of order and of jurisdiction. The first is what an 
individual officer may do by himself, the second, what he 
can only do when joined with similar officers. The power 
of doctrine is administered severally when ruling bishops 
teach privately and from house to house. The teaching 
bishop administers it both privately and publicly. Thus 
both classes of elders have this several power of doctrine. 
Gillespie calls this their power of order. But power of 
jurisdiction, and also of legislation, belong only to the 
courts of the church, and these are their joint power. We 
recognize no one-man power of making law or of applying 
power in jurisdiction. (See Chapter XL, Section vi.) 

Coming now to the authority of individual bishops, or 
presbyters, to deliver dogmas, Calvin says this authority 
is not given to themselves, but to their office. As usual, he 
is in this chapter continually contrasting scriptural in- 
stitutions and officers with those of the Romish church. 

He says, u The authority and dignity of church officers, 
whether priests, or prophets, or apostles, or successors of 
apostles, is not given to themselves, but to their office ; or, 
to speak more plainly, it is given to the word, for they 
can only teach or give interpretations in the name of the 
Lord. Before he brings them forward to speak to the 
people he always instructs them what to speak, lest they 
should speak anything but his own word. This is shown 
in the case of Moses and the Levitical priests. Accord- 
ingly, when the people embraced Moses' doctrine, they 
are said to have believed the Lord and his servant Moses. 
The priests, too, who under the severest sanctions were 
not to be despised, are said to be only messengers of the 
Lord. It is said he made his covenant with Levi, that 



258 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



the law of truth might be in his mouth ; also that the 
priests' lips should keep knowledge. Therefore, if the 
priest would be heard, let him faithfully deliver the com- 
mands which he has received from his Maker." (Exodus 
iii. 4; Deut. xvii. 9; Exodus xiv. 31; Malachi ii. 4, 6; 
Deut. xvii. 11.) 

The same thing is true as to the prophets. Ezekiel is 
elegantly described as a watchman who is to hear at the 
mouth of the Lord and give warning (Ezekiel iii. IT). 
In Jeremiah we read, "The prophet that hath a dream, 
let him tell a dream ; and he that hath my word, let him 
speak my word faithfully" (Jeremiah xxiii. 28). Surely 
this is the law to all. 'None is to speak except what he 
has heard from the Lord; everything else is called 
"chaff/' while the word of the Lord is wheat. The 
prophets continually speak of "the word of the Lord," 
"the burden of the Lord." Isaiah (vi. 5) says his lips 
are unclean, and Jeremiah (i. 6) calls himself a child, as 
long as they are speaking their own language, but as soon 
as they became the organs of the Spirit their lips were 
holy and their words pure. After strict charges given not 
to speak except at his mouth, there are conferred upon 
them great powers and illustrious titles. They are set 
over nations to pull down and to build up (Jeremiah i. 

9 ' 10 )- . . . - . 

To the apostles are given distinguished titles, "Light," 
"Salt," "Binders and Loosers" ; but they tell us their 
sole power is to speak his commands faithfully. But, 
besides Moses and the priests, and the prophets and the 
apostles, he that is above all gives us an example, by con- 
descending to take on him the same rule. . "My doctrine 
is not mine, but his that sent me." The power of the 
church, therefore, is limited to the word of the Lord. 

But although the word is our only rule, and Christ our 
only Teacher, yet the methods of teaching and learning, 
from the beginning down to our times, have been various. 
Our Saviour says, "No man knoweth the Father but he to 
whom the Son will reveal him ;" all, therefore, from the 
beginning, who attain to the knowledge of God were 
taught by the Son himself. From this fountain Adam, 
Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob drew all the heavenly 



CALVIx's INSTITUTES. 



259 



doctrine which they possessed. From the same drew all 
the prophets all their heavenly oracles. But the mode 
was different ; for to the patriarchs he gave secret revela- 
tions, accompanied, however, with such signs or miracles 
as convinced them it was God who spoke. These revela- 
tions they handed down to posterity, who, hy the inward 
teaching of God's Spirit, knew that the doctrine was of 
heaven and not of earth. 

Afterwards God gives to his church a more illustrious 
form, by bestowing on her his written word ; then this 
becomes what the priests must teach the people (Malachi 
ii. 7 ) . This was the law, and nothing to be added to it or 
taken from it. Xext come the prophets, speaking new 
oracles from God, flowing nevertheless out of the law, and 
having constant respect to it. As respects doctrine, 
prophets were just interpreters of the law, adding nothing 
to it, although they spoke predictions of future events. 
With this exception, all they said was in exposition of the 
law. Then afterwards, the Lord had prophecy committed 
to writing. There were also historical details written by 
prophets, but dictated by the Holy Spirit. I include the 
Psalms among the prophecies, being also by inspiration. 
Thus the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms and Histories 
made up the word of the Lord, binding on the Old Testa- 
ment church; nor could they turn either to the right 
hand or to the left from this, the word of the Lord. This 
is gathered from the celebrated passage in Malachi iv. 4, 
where they are enjoined to remember the law until should 
come the preaching of the gospel ; thus restraining them 
from all adventitious doctrines or departing in the least 
degree from the path pointed out by Moses ; for the rea- 
son why David so magnificently extols the law in Psalms 
xix. and cxix. was in order that the Jews meanwhile 
might not long for any extraneous aid, all perfection being 
included in the law. 

Last of all appears the incarnate wisdom of God, un- 
folding to us all that the human mind can comprehend or 
ought to think of the Father. The Sun of Righteousness 
having risen, we have now the noon-day of truth. God, 
at sundry times and in divers manners, having spoken to 
us by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us 



260 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



by his Son. This, then, is God's last and eternal testi- 
mony. The whole period, from the appearance of Christ 
down to the judgment day, is called the last hour, the 
last times, the last days ; therefore, we are to frame no 
new doctrine for ourselves, nor receive any devised by 
others. The Son is appointed our sole Teacher in the 
solemn words spoken from heaven; hear him. Indeed, 
what can be desired or expected by man when the Word 
of Life has appeared and explained himself \ Every 
mouth should be stopped when once he has spoken, for in 
him are "hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." 
(Colossians ii. 3.) 

Therefore, let this be a sure axiom : Nothing else is to 
be held (habendum esse Dei verbum) as a word of God, to 
which place is to be given in the church, unless, first, it 
be contained in the law and the prophets, and then in the 
apostolic writings, and the only right method of teaching 
in the church is according to the prescription and rule of 
his word. (The reader can see here the doctrine formally 
set forth by Calvin, that nothing is proper in the worship 
of God unless it has a divine right to be there.) Here, 
says Calvin, we also infer that nothing else was permitted 
to the apostles than to the prophets, viz., to expound the 
ancient scriptures, and show that what they contained 
was fulfilled in Christ ; and to do even this they required 
to have the spirit of Christ. For his command to them 
was, "Go, teach whatsoever I have commanded." Else- 
where he twice repeats, "Be not ye called Rabbi ; for one 
is your Master, even Christ." And then he promises to 
give them the Spirit of Truth to guide them into all 
truth. 

Accordingly, Peter, from the mouth of his Master, 
commands, "If any man speak, let him speak as the 
oracles of God" ; that is, speak nothing but the command- 
ments of God, and always boldly, as with authority from 
God. Thus we are to banish from the church of the faith- 
ful all inventions of the human mind, no matter from 
what head proceeding, so that only the pure word of God 
shall remain ; and to discard all the decrees or fictions of 
men (whatever be their rank), that only the decrees of 
God may remain. These are the weapons of our warfare, 



calvi^'s institutes. 



261 



which are hot carnal, but niighty through God. Such is 
the supreme power with which pastors — called by whatso- 
ever name — are invested, namely, to dare all boldly for 
the word of God ; compelling all ranks, from the highest 
to the lowest, to yield and obey its majesty; trusting to 
its power alone to build up the house of God, and over- 
throw the house of Satan ; feeding the sheep and chasing 
away the wolves ; instructing and exhorting the docile ; 
accusing, rebuking, and subduing the rebellious and petu- 
lant ; binding and loosing ; in fine, if need be, to thunder 
and to lighten (fidgurent denique, si opus est, ac fuhni- 
nent) ; but all in the word of God. There is this differ- 
ence, however, between the apostles and their successors: 
they were the sure and authentic amanuenses of the 
Spirit, hence their writings are the oracles of God, while 
their successors are only to teach what is delivered in the 
holy Scriptures. It does not now belong, therefore, to 
faithful ministers to coin any new doctrine, but only to 
adhere to those doctrines to which all without exception 
are made subject. This applies not only to individuals, 
but to the whole church. Paul was apostle to the Corin- 
thians, yet declares he had no dominion over their faith. 
If Paul dared not, who will now dare arrogate to himself 
anv such dominion I Put it will be said, that with regard 
to the whole church the case is different. I answer that 
Paul meets the objection when he says that faith comes 
by hearing, that is, by hearing God's written word, and 
that only and alone. Hence there is no place left for any 
word of man. True faith in God's word will have 
strength enough to stand intrepid and invincible against 
Satan, the machinations of hell and the whole world. 
This strength is to be found only in the word of God. 
Here, then, is a rule of universal application — God de- 
prives man of the power of producing any new doctrine, 
in order that he alone may be our blaster in spiritual 
teaching, as he alone is true, and can neither lie nor de- 
ceive. This rule applies not less to the whole church than 
to every individual believer. 

The ninth chapter treats of councils and their author- 
ity; that is to say, of the assemblies of ecclesiastical 
rulers, whether provincial or general. The former an- 



262 



MY LIFE A^D TIMES. 



swer to the General Assemblies of the Presbyterian 
Church and of other Protestant bodies ; but the General 
Council of the papists falsely claims universal authority 
over the whole church. In this chapter, therefore, Calvin 
first discusses the authority of councils or assemblies in 
delivering dogmas (Sec. 1-7). The errors of certain 
general councils discussed in Sections 8-12 will be passed 
over and Sections 13 and 14 taken up, wherein is dis- 
cussed the power of councils or assemblies over the inter- 
pretation of scripture. 

Calvin at the outset explains the zeal of Rome in mag- 
nifying church power, as due entirely to their wish to 
exalt the Pontiff and his conclave, on whom they bestow 
all they can extort. He professes the hearty veneration 
which he feels for the ancient councils, and would have all 
hold them in due honor ; but a limit must be set to this 
lest Christ be dishonored. It is his right to preside over 
all assemblies, and he will not share the honor with any 
man. Now, he presides only when he governs the whole 
assembly by his word and Spirit. Again, in attributing 
to councils less than is claimed for them by Rome, it is 
not that he is afraid of them, they being against us and 
for Rome, because he is amply provided from the scrip- 
tures with the means not only of sustaining his own 
doctrine, but also of overthrowing the whole papacy; 
though, if the case required it, ancient councils furnish 
us with what might even be sufficient for both purposes. 

~Now the scriptural authority of assemblies is found in 
these words, "Where two or three are gathered together 
in my name, there am I in the midst of them." But this 
promise is just as applicable to any particular meeting as 
to universal councils. The important part is the condi- 
tion — "in my name." To say that any council was at- 
tended by thousands of bishops will little avail, nor can 
we believe that such a numerous council is guided by the 
Spirit, unless assembled in the name of Christ, since it 
is as possible for the wicked and dishonest to conspire 
against Christ as for good and honest bishops to meet in 
his name. We have clear proof of this in many of their 
councils. I only deny that they assemble in the name of 
Christ who, disregarding his command to add nothing to 



CALVIx's INSTITUTES. 



263 



and take nothing from his word, determine everything at 
their own pleasure, and who, not content with the oracles 
of scripture, devise some novelty out of their own head. 
(Dent. iv. 2; Rev. xxii. 18.) God's covenant with the 
Levitieal priest was to teach at his mouth ; such, also, was 
the law for prophets and apostles. Let Rome solve this 
difficulty if she would subject my faith to the decrees of 
man. 

Rome maintains that the truth is always with the pas- 
tors, and the church cannot exist unless displayed in gen- 
eral councils. My answer is from the prophets : In the 
time of Isaiah, God had not yet abandoned the church; 
but how did he speak of the pastors '? "His watchmen 
are blind ; they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, 
they cannot bark ; sleeping, lying down, loving to slum- 
ber. Yea, they are greedy dogs which never have enough, 
and they are shepherds that cannot understand ; they all 
look to their own way" (Isaiah lvi. 10, 11). See similar 
denunciations in Hosea ix. 8 ; Jeremiah vi. 13 ; xiv. 11 ; 
Ezekiel xxii. 25, 26. Read the whole of Jeremiah's 
thirty-third and fortieth chapters. There is more of the 
same kind throughout the prophets ; nothing is of more 
frequent recurrence. 

But while this great evil prevailed in the Jewish 
church, was the Christian church to be exempt from it I 
Would that it were so ; but the Holy Spirit declared that 
it would be otherwise. Peter's words are clear — " There 
shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring 
in damnable heresies." See how he here predicts impend- 
ing danger, not from ordinary believers, but from the 
pastors and teachers. How often do Christ and his apos- 
tles predict that the greatest danger to the church would 
come from pastors ! Paul openly declares that Antichrist 
would have his seat in the church. ^Moreover, he says this 
great evil was almost at hand. He tells the elders of 
Ephesns that among themselves should men arise speak- 
ing perverse things. If these could degenerate in so short 
a time, what great corruption might not a great series of 
years introduce among pastors ! It has been thus in 
almost every age — the safety of the church does not de- 
pend on the pastor. It was becoming that those appointed 



264 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



to preserve the peace and safety of the church should be 
its presidents and guardians ; but it is one thing to per- 
form what you owe, and another to owe what you do not 
perform. 

Let me not be misunderstood as desiring to overthrow 
the authority of pastors. All that I advise is that we 
exercise discrimination, not supposing that all who call 
themselves pastors are such indeed. But the Pope, with 
his whole herd of bishops, for no other reason than that 
they have the name of pastors, obedience to God's word 
being shaken off, invert all things at their pleasure ; 
meanwhile claiming that they cannot be destitute of the 
light of truth, that the Spirit of God perpetually resides 
in them, that the church subsists in them and dies with 
them, as if the Lord did not punish wickedness now as 
of old, by smiting pastors with astonishment and blind- 
ness (Zech. xii. 4). Xor do these most stolid (stolidis- 
si?ni)men understand that they are just chiming in with 
those who warred with the word of God, as said the ene- 
mies of Jeremiah, "Corae and let us devise devices against 
Jeremiah, for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor 
counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet 
(Jeremiah xviii. 18). 

Hence it is easy to reply to their allegations concerning 
general councils. The Jews undoubtedly had a true 
church under the prophets. But we hear the Lord de- 
nouncing the priests of that day — not one or two of them, 
but the whole order. (See Jeremiah iv. 9, and see Ezekiel 
vii. 2G; Micah iii. 6.) But had a general council then 
been composed of the priests, had all men of this descrip- 
tion been collected together, what spirit would have pre- 
sided over their meeting ? Ahab's notable council is a 
fair example of this kind (1 Kings xxii. 6, 22). There 
were four hundred prophets present, but a lying spirit in 
all their mouths. They unanimously condemn the truth. 
]\Iicaiah is judged a heretic, smitten and cast into prison. 
So was it done to Jeremiah, and so to the other prophets. 

But the most memorable example of a council without 
God is that which met and condemned Christ. Nothing 
is wanting, so far as external appearance is concerned. 
Had there been no church there, Christ had never joined 



calvin's institutes. 



265 



in their worship. A solemn meeting is held. The high 
priest presided, the whole sacerdotal order is present, yet 
Christ is condemned and his truth is put to flight. In 
Thessalonians ii. 3, Paul foretells a defection; but that 
was a defection which could not come until the pastors 
should first forsake God. We cannot, therefore, admit 
that the church consists in a meeting of pastors, the Lord 
having nowhere promised that they should always be 
good, but having sometimes foretold that they should be 
wicked. 

Having proved that there is no power in assemblies to 
set up any new doctrine, what power belongs to them in 
the interpretation of scripture ? Calvin readily admits 
that when any doctrine is controverted, there is no better 
plan than for a council of true bishops to meet and discuss 
the question, and then agree in common upon the exact 
form in which the point should be stated. Paul prescribes 
this method when he gives the power of deciding to any 
single church ; much more is this proper to the churches 
met in common council. If any one trouble the church 
with some novelty in doctrine, and a dissension rises and 
spreads, the churches should first meet, and after due ex- 
amination and discussion, decide according to the scrip- 
ture. This was done in the case of Arius by the Council 
of Nice, and in the case of Eunomius and Macedonius by 
the Council of Constantinople ; in the case of Nestorius 
by the Council of Ephesus. In short, this was the usual 
method, from the first, for the preserving of unity. But 
let us remember that all ages and places are not favored 
with an Athanasius, a Basil, a Cyril, and like vindicators 
of sound doctrine whom the Lord then raised up. Nay, 
let us consider what happened in the second Council of 
Ephesus when the Eutychian heresy prevailed. Flavi- 
anus, of holy memory, with some pious men, was driven 
into exile, and many similar crimes were committed, be- 
cause, instead of the Spirit of the Lord, Dioscorus, a fac- 
tious man, of a very bad disposition, presided. But the 
church was not there. I confess it; for I always hold 
that the truth does not perish in the church, even though 
trodden down by one council ; for the truth will be won- 
derfully preserved by the Lord to rise again in his own 



266 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



time, and prove victorious. But this I perpetually deny, 
that every interpretation of scripture is true and certain 
which has received the votes of a council. 

When, however, the Romanists maintain that councils 
have the power of interpreting scripture, they have an- 
other object in view, namely, that they may make of it a 
pretext for alleging that everything determined by the 
council is an interpretation of scripture. Of purgatory, 
intercession of saints, and auricular confession, there is 
not one word in scripture. But these are all to be held as 
interpretations of scripture. Not only so, but whatever 
a council has determined against scripture is to have the 
name of an interpretation of scripture. Christ bids all 
drink of the cup, but the Council of Constance (1414) 
prohibited giving it to the people, and ordained that 
priests alone should drink. Paul terms the prohibition of 
marriage a doctrine of devils, and says that marriage is 
honorable in all ; but Rome, having interdicted marriage 
to her priests, insists that this is a true and genuine inter- 
pretation of scripture. Their claim for councils of the 
power of approving or disapproving scripture is a blas- 
phemy which deserves not to be mentioned. I will just 
ask one question: If the authority of any scripture is 
founded on the approbation of the church, will they quote 
the decree of a council to that effect ? At the Council of 
Nice, Arius was vanquished by passages from the Gospel 
of John. But according to Rome, he was at liberty to re- 
pudiate them because no council had then approved them. 
They allege an old catalogue, which they call a canon. 
Again I ask : What council published that canon \ They 
aie dumb. Also, what do -they believe that canon to be I 
The ancients themselves are little agreed about this. If 
effect is to be given to what J erome says, the Maccabees, 
Tobit, Ecclesiasticus and the like, must take their place in 
the Apocrypha; but this they will not tolerate on any 
account. 

The tenth chapter treats of the power of making laws ; 
the cruelty of the Pope and his adherents, in this respect, 
in tyrannically oppressing and destroying souls. In this 
chapter Calvin discusses, I. Human constitutions in gen- 
eral ; the distinction between civil and ecclesiastical laws ; 



CATVIN S INSTITUTES. 



267 



Conscience, why and in what sense ministers cannot im- 
pose laws on the conscience (Sec. 1—8). II. Traditions 
or popish constitutions relating to ceremonies and dis- 
cipline, and the many vices in them, also arguments in 
favor of those traditions refuted (Sec. 9-26) will be 
passed over, and ecclesiastical constitutions that are good 
and lawful (Sec. 27-32) will be taken up. 

We come to the second part of power claimed by Borne 
for her councils, namely, that of making laws, from which 
source innumerable traditions have arisen to become 
deadly snares to miserable souls. These are just like the 
burdens imposed by scribes and Pharisees, which, how- 
ever, they touched not with one of their fingers (Matt, 
xxiii. 4; Luke xi. 16). I have shown (Book III., Chap, 
iv., Sec. 4-7) how cruelly murderous is their law of au- 
ricular confession ; their other laws may not seem so vio- 
lent, but the most tolerable ones press tyrannically on the 
conscience. The question now is, can the church make 
laws to bind our conscience ? This question concerns the 
great affairs of God's authority as the only lawgiver, and 
our spiritual liberty, civil order not being here consid- 
ered. Whatever laws men, without the authority of 
God's word, have made respecting our relations to him, 
we call human traditions. It is these I contend against, 
and not against those sacred and useful regulations which 
the church must make respecting discipline, decency and 
peace. I only insist that necessity must not be imposed 
upon consciences set free by Christ, and which without 
this freedom cannot have peace. Christ must be ac- 
knowledged as our Deliverer, our only King. We are to 
be ruled by the only law of liberty, the sacred word of 
the gospel, otherwise we cannot retain the grace we have 
already received in Christ, We must be subject to no 
bondage — be bound by no chains. 

Borne represents the burdens she has imposed on the 
conscience as few and light. In fact, they cannot be 
counted, are exacted with the greatest rigor, very many 
of them difficult, and the whole taken together impossible 
to be observed. How, then, can those on whom this moun- 
tain of laws is imposed avoid being perplexed with 
anxiety and filled with terror ? I therefore impugn these 



268 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



church laws enacted to bind the conscience inwardly be- 
fore God, and imposed as rules necessary to salvation. 

Many are puzzled about this matter because they do 
not distinguish between the external forum and the forum 
of conscience ; that is, between courts of men and of God. 
This perplexity is increased by the words of Paul when 
he enjoins obedience to magistrates "not only for wrath, 
but also for conscience' sake," which seem to teach that 
civil laws (that is, human laws) can bind the conscience. 
This difficulty is to be solved by etymology. When men 
have knowledge, that is science; but when, in addition 
to this, they have a sense of the divine judgment, as a wit- 
ness not permitting them to hide their sins, but bringing 
them up as criminals, this is called conscience. This is 
what Paul means when he says that conscience bears wit- 
ness, and thoughts accuse or else excuse. Hence the old 
proverb, "Conscience is a thousand witnesses." Peter 
also speaks of the answer of a good conscience before 
God. 

Sometimes, indeed, conscience does extend to men, as 
when Paul declares, "Herein do I exercise myself to have 
always a conscience void of offence toward God and to- 
ward men." But this is said because the benefits of a 
good conscience flow forth and reach even to men. Prop- 
erly speaking, however, conscience respects God alone, as 
I have already said. Another rule also holds in the case 
of things which are in themselves indifferent. We ought 
to abstain so as not to give offence, but conscience is free. 
After being warned against idol-meat, for example, it 
would be wrong for the believer to eat it ; but the neces- 
sity is in respect to a brother's weakness, and not to the 
Lord. The law binds the external act, but the conscience 
is free. 

Let us return to human laws. They are unlawful 
when imposed as of religious obligation and to bind the 
conscience ; for conscience has to do not with man, but 
with God only. 

But we have not yet explained the difficulty which 
arises from the words of Paul. For if we must obey mag- 
istrates, not only from fear of punishment, but for con- 
science' sake, it seems to follow that their laws have do- 



calvin's institutes. 



269 



minion over the conscience. And then the same thing- 
would follow as to church laws. I answer that we must 
distinguish between the genus and the species ; for 
although individual laws may not bind the conscience, vet 
we are bound by the general law of God to honor magis- 
trates. Here is the hinge on which turns Paul's discus- 
sion, viz., magistrates are to be honored because ordained 
of God ; but he by no means teaches that their laws ex- 
tend to the internal government of the soul, since he 
everywhere proclaims that God's worship and the spirit- 
ual law of right living are superior to all decrees of men. 
Another thing worthy of notice and depending on what 
has been said before, is that human laws, whether by 
magistrate or church — I speak of such as are good ones — 
are necessary to be observed, but do not bind the con- 
science, because the whole necessity of observing them de- 
pends on the general end, and consists not in the thing it- 
self which is commanded. Very different, however, is the 
case of those which prescribe a new form of worshipping 
God, and introduce necessity into things that are free. 

Calvin's doctrine of the church's having no proper 
legislative power is the source whence came that state- 
ment of the Westminster Confession of Faith, a The 
whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for 
his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either 
expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary 
consequence may be deduced from scripture ; unto which 
nothing is at any time to be added, whether by new reve- 
lations of the Spirit, or by traditions of men. But there 
are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, 
and the government of the church common to human 
actions and societies which are to be ordered by the light 
of nature and Christian prudence." God is the only 
lawgiver; no laws but his revealed ones bind the con- 
science. Those laws cover every point of human worship, 
human belief and human practice. The church can only 
make circumstantial rules of order and decency. As to 
what Paul says concerning the law of the magistrate to be 
obeyed for conscience' sake, Calvin holds that to be God's 
general direction of paying respect to lawful authority, 
but no human law, whether of church or state, can bind 



270 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES 



our consciences. Our liberty of conscience is beyond their 
sphere. "Whatever laws the magistrate puts forth that are 
good and just, we shall, of course, obey iu obedience to 
God's command. The whole necessity or obligation to 
obey them respects the general end, that is, of regard to 
God's command, and respects not any inherent authority 
in the magistrate's command itself. He may command 
what is right ; he may command what is wrong. Your 
obligation to obey springs not from the magistrate's com- 
manding it, but from the general command of God ; and 
if the command is against your conscience, there is no obli- 
gation to obey it. Any commands from the magistrate 
which introduce new forms of divine worship, or which 
introduce necessity into things that are free, we are not 
bound to obey. 

Calvin continues : "Everything relating to a perfect 
rule of life God has comprehended in his word, so that 
he has left nothing for men to add to the summary there 
given. The reasons for this are, first, that since all recti- 
tude of human conduct must be what accords with the 
Creator's will, we must regard him alone as the master 
and guide of our life ; and, secondly, that he might show 
that there is nothing which he more requires of us than 
obedience, ( James iv. 11. 12; Isaiah xxxiii. 22 : 1 Peter 
v. 2). Thus is cut off all the power claimed by those who 
would take it upon them to order anything in the church 
without authority from the word of God." 

In view, then, of the two reasons why God claims for 
himself to be our sole lawgiver, and for which he forbids 
men to take that honor to themselves, it will be easy to 
decide that all human constitutions or invented improve- 
ments by men in the worship or service of God, are con- 
trary to the word of his law, especially when their observ- 
ance is bound upon the conscience as of necessary obliga- 
tion. The first of the two reasons in question is urged 
by Paul in the Epistle to the Oolossians against the false 
apostles, who attempted to lay new burdens on the 
churches. In this epistle he maintains that the true wor- 
ship of God is not to be sought from men. the Lord having 
fully taught that to us himself. All this is fully set forth 
in the first and second chapters. In the end of the second 



CATVIX S INSTITUTES. 



271 



chapter lie more decisively condemns all factitious modes 
of worship, and all precepts concerning the worship of 
God which men devise at their own pleasure or receive 
from others. Similarly, passages in which Paul forbids 
the binding of fetters on the conscience are found in the 
fifth chapter of Galatians, where reference is also made to 
like work by false apostles. 

Of Ecclesiastical Rides that are Lawful. 

The apostle enjoins that all things be done decently and 
in order, which requires the observance of rules to be 
ordained by the church. But these rules of mere decency 
and order must not be confounded with such as bind the 
conscience. The decency which Paul commends is a regu- 
lated use of rites that produce reverence and gravity in 
sacred matters ; while the order he enjoins requires that 
they who preside shall know the law and rule of right 
government, and that those who are governed should 
cheerfully yield obedience to right discipline. 

The remainder of this chapter consists of four sections, 
in which Calvin presents the reader with a full delinea- 
tion of his idea of decency and order. They constitute a 
most charming exhibition of the reformer's wisdom and 
piety, of the clearness of his intellect, of his strict ad- 
herence to principle, and at the same time, of the moder- 
ation of his views and the breadth of his charity. 

We shall not, therefore, give the name of decency to 
that which only ministers an empty pleasure ; such, for 
example, as is seen in that theatrical display Avhich the 
papists exhibit in their public service, where nothing ap- 
pears but a mask of uselss splendor, and luxury without 
any fruit. But we give the name of decency to that 
which, suited to the reverence of sacred mysteries, forms 
a fit exercise for piety, or at least gives an ornament 
adapted to the action, and is not without fruit, but re- 
minds believers of the great modesty, seriousness and 
reverence with which sacred things ought to be treated. 
Moreover, ceremonies, in order to be exercises of piety, 
must lead us directly to Christ. In like manner, we shall 
not make order consist in that nugatory pomp which gives 
nothing but evanescent splendor, but in that arrangement 



272 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



which removes all confusion, barbarism, contumacy, all 
turbulence and dissension. Of the former class, we have 
examples (1 Corinthians xi. 5, 21), where Paul says that 
profane entertainments must not be intermingled with 
the sacred supper of the Lord ; that women must not ap- 
pear in public uncovered. And there are many other 
things which we have in daily practice, such as praying on 
our knees, and with our head uncovered, administering 
the sacraments of the Lord, not sordidly, but with some 
degree of dignity; employing some degree of solemnity 
in the burial of our dead, and so forth. In the other class 
are the hours set apart for public prayer, sermon and 
solemn services ; during sermon, quiet and silence, fixed 
places, singing of hymns, days set apart for the celebra- 
tion of the Lord's supper, the prohibition of Paul against 
women teaching in the church, and such like. To the 
same list, especially, may be referred those things which 
preserve discipline, as catechising, ecclesiastical censures, 
excommunication, fastings, etc. Thus all ecclesiastical 
constitutions, which we admit to be sacred and salutary, 
may be reduced to two heads, the one relating to rites and 
ceremonies, the other to discipline and peace. 

But as there is here a danger, on the one hand, lest false 
bishops should thence derive a pretext for their impious 
and tyrannical laws, and, on the other, lest some, too apt 
to take alarm, should, from fear of the above evils, leave 
no place for laws, however holy, it may here be proper to 
declare, that I approve of those human constitutions only 
which are founded on the authority of God and derived 
from scripture, and are, therefore, altogether divine. Let 
us take, for example, the bending of the knee, which is 
made in public prayer. It is asked, whether this is a hu- 
man tradition, which any one is at liberty to repudiate 
or neglect ? I say, that it is human, and that at the same 
time it is divine. It is of God, inasmuch as it is a part 
of that decency, the care and observance of which is 
recommended by the apostle ; and it is of men, inasmuch 
as it specially determines what was indicated in general, 
rather than expounded. Prom this one example, we may 
judge what is to be thought of the whole class, viz., that 
the whole sum of righteousness, and all the parts of divine 



CALVIN" S INSTITUTES. 



273 



worship, and everything necessary to salvation, the Lord 
has faithfully comprehended, and clearly nnfolded in his 
sacred oracles, so that in them he alone is the only Master 
to be heard. But as, in external discipline and cere- 
monies, he has not been pleased to prescribe every par- 
ticular that we ought to observe (he foresaw that this de- 
pended on the nature of the times, and that one form 
would not suit all ages), in them we must have recourse 
to the general rules which he has given, employing them 
to test whatever the necessity of the church may require 
to be enjoined for order and decency. Lastly, as he has 
not delivered any express command, because things of 
this nature are not necessary to salvation, and, for the 
edification of the church, should be accommodated to the 
varying circumstances of each age and nation, it will be 
proper, as the interest of the church may require, to 
change and abrogate the old, as well as to introduce new 
forms. I confess,' indeed, that we are not to innovate 
rashly, or incessantly, or for trivial causes. Charity is 
the best judge of what tends to hurt or to edify; if we 
allow her to be guide, all things will be safe. 

Things which have been appointed according to this 
rule, it is the duty of the Christian people to observe with 
■a free conscience indeed, and without superstition, but 
also with a pious and ready inclination to obey. They 
are not to hold them in contempt, nor pass them by with 
careless indifference, far less .openly to violate them in 
pride and contumacy. You will ask, what liberty of con- 
science will there be in such cautious observances ? Nay, 
this liberty will admirably appear when we shall hold 
that these are not fixed and perpetual obligations to 
which we are astricted, but external rudiments for human 
infirmity, which, though we do not all need, we, however, 
all use, because we are bound to cherish mutual charity 
towards each other. This we may recognize in the ex- 
amples given above. What ? Is religion placed in a wo- 
man's bonnet, so that it is unlawful for her to go out with 
her head uncovered ? Is her silence fixed by a decree 
which cannot be violated without the greatest wickedness ? 
Is there any mystery in bending the knee, or in burying 
;a dead body, which cannot be omitted without a crime ? 



274 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



By no means. For, should a woman require to make such 
haste in assisting a neighbor that she has not time to 
cover her head, she sins not in running out with her head 
uncovered. And there are some occasions on which it is 
not less seasonable for her to speak than on others to be 
silent. ^Nothing, moreover, forbids him who, from dis- 
ease, cannot bend his knees, to pray standing. In fine, 
it is better to bury a dead man quickly than from want of 
grave-clothes, or the absence of those who should attend 
the funeral, to wait till it rot away unburied. Neverthe- 
less, in those matters, the customs and institutions of 
the country, in short, humanity and the rules of modesty 
itself, declare what is to be done or avoided. Here, if any 
error is committed through imprudence or forgetfulness, 
no crime is perpetrated; but if this is done from con- 
tempt, such contumacy must be disapproved. In like 
manner, it is of no consequence what the days and hours 
are, what the nature of the edifices, and what psalms are 
sung on each day ; but it is proper that there should be 
certain days and stated hours, and a place fit for receiving 
all, if any regard is had to the preservation of peace. For 
what a seed-bed of quarrels will confusion in such matters 
be, if every one is allowed at pleasure to alter what per- 
tains to common order \ All will not be satisfied with 
the same course, if matters, placed, as it were, on debat- 
able ground, are left to the determination of individuals. 
But if any one here becomes clamorous, and would be 
wiser than he ought, let him consider how he will approve 
his moroseness to the Lord. Paul's answer ought to sat- 
isfy us, "If any man seem to be contentious, we have no 
such custom, neither the churches of God." 

Moreover, we must use the utmost diligence to prevent 
any error from creeping in which may either taint or 
sully this pure use. In this we shall succeed, if whatever 
observances we use are manifestly useful, and very few in 
number; especially if to this is added the teaching of a 
faithful pastor, which may prevent access to erroneous 
opinions. The effect of this procedure is, that in all these 
matters each retains his freedom, and yet, at the same 
time, voluntarily subjects it to a kind of necessity, in so 
far as the decency, of which we have spoken, or charity,. 



calvin's institutes. 



275 



demands. Next, that, in the observance of these things, 
we may not fall into any superstition, nor rigidly require 
too much from others, let us not imagine that the worship 
of God is improved by a multitude of ceremonies ; let not 
church despise church because of a difference in external 
discipline. Lastly, instead of here laying down any per- 
petual law for ourselves, let us refer the whole end and 
use of observances to the edification of the church, at 
whose request let us without offence allow not only some- 
thing to be changed, but even observances which were 
formerly in use to be inverted; for the present age is a 
proof that the nature of times allows that certain rites, 
not otherwise impious or imbecoming, may be abrogated 
according to circumstances. Such was the ignorance and 
blindness of former times; with such erroneous ideas 
and pertinacious zeal did churches formerly cling to cere- 
monies, that they can scarcely be purified from monstrous 
superstitions without the removal of many ceremonies 
which were formerly established, not without cause, and 
which in themselves are not chargeable with any impiety. 

The eleventh chapter treats of ecclesiastical jurisdic- 
tion, its necessity, origin, and essential parts, viz., the 
sacred ministry of the word, and discipline of excommu- 
nication, of which the aim, use and abuse are explained 
(Sec. 1-8). The remaining sections of this chapter 
(9-16) are passed over, containing a refutation of pa- 
pists' arguments in defence of the tyranny of pontiffs, 
their claim to both swords, imperial pomp and dignity, 
foreign jurisdiction, and immunity for their priesthood 
from civil jurisdiction. 

We come now to the third part of ecclesiastical power, 
which consists in jurisdiction, upon which, in both its 
parts, the discipline of the church, in great measure, de- 
pends. Accordingly, jurisdiction is the principal part of 
church power, for it is of absolute necessity to the church, 
just as no city or village can exist without magistrates 
and government. But this spiritual government of the 
church is altogether distinct from the civil government, 
being the order provided by the Lord for the polity only 
of his church ; for to this end there were established, 
from the first, tribunals to take cognizance of morals, 



276 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



animadvert on vices, and exercise the office of the keys. 
Paul speaks of these in 1 Corinthians xii. 28, under the 
name of "governments" ; also in Romans xii. 8, where he 
says, "He that ruleth, with diligence" ; likewise in 1 
Timothy v. 17, he mentions two kinds of presbyters — 
some who labor in the word and doctrine, and others who 
only rule well ; for in these places he is speaking of the 
power of the keys which Christ bestowed on the church 
in Matthew xviii. 15-17, where he orders that those who 
despise private admonition should be reported to the 
church, and if they hear not the church, must be ex- 
pelled from its communion. But these admonitions and 
corrections cannot be made without investigation ; hence 
some judicial procedure and order is necessary to the 
church. We speak not here of the general power of doc- 
trine, as in Matthew xvi. 19, John xx. 23, but of the 
rights of the Sanhedrin transferred to the Christian 
church, in as far as that was a pure institution and pro- 
tective of the church by heavy sanctions ; for clearly in 
the two passages above named reference is to be had to the 
apostolic commission, to preach the word, to which com- 
mission is added this assurance about the binding and 
loosing for the encouragement both of the preacher and of 
his hearers. This attestation passes down to all ages and 
remains firm, rendering all certain and secure, that the 
word of the gospel, by whomsoever preached, is the very 
word of God, promulgated at the supreme tribunal, writ- 
ten in the book of life, ratified firm and fixed in heaven. 
Therefore, in those two texts the power of the keys is sim- 
ply the preaching of the gospel, and, as to the men who 
preach, it is not power, but simply ministry. 

iSTow, in Matthew xviii. 17, 18, we read again of bind- 
ing and loosing. This passage is not altogether similar to 
those above, and must be understood somewhat differ- 
ently. They are similar in that both are general state- 
ments ; that both speak of the same power of binding and 
loosing; there is the same command and the same prom- 
ise. They differ in that the former two passages relate 
to preaching, but the third to church discipline. On these 
passages Rome builds confession, excommunication, juris- 
diction, legislation and indulgences. She has fitted doors 



CAIiVIN^S INSTITUTES. 



277 



and locks to the keys as skillfully as if all her life she 
had been a mechanic. 

Some may imagine that all these divine arrangements 
for church discipline were only temporary, and that the 
civil power, having now become Christian, is perfectly 
competent to correct all abuses and purify society. Ac- 
cordingly, Calvin proceeds to point out the dissimilarity 
between ecclesiastical and civil power. The church has 
no sword and no prison, no power to coerce. Xor is pun- 
ishment ever the church's object, but only repentance. 
The magistrate imprisons ; the pastor debars from the 
Lord's table. But as the magistrate ought to purge the 
church of offences by corporal punishment and coercion, 
so the minister ought, in his turn, to assist the magistrate 
in diminishing the number of offenders. Thus they ought 
to combine their efforts, the one being not an impediment, 
but a help to the other. 

The reformer here seems to signify that the church 
may very well give thanks to the civil magistrate if he 
helps her to keep her members in order. The discipline 
provided by the Master, faithfully and wisely adminis- 
tered, certainly should stand in no need of help from the 
state ; but when we consider how imperfectly discipline 
is administered in our time, we have no reason to wonder 
at Calvin's language. 

He proceeds to say it is quite clear that the order of the 
church and her spiritual tribunals is designed by the Lord 
to be perpetuated through all ages, because it would be 
incongruous that those who refuse to obey our admoni- 
tions should be turned over to the magistrate, which 
would be necessary and suitable, of course, if he were to 
be the successor of the church rulers. The promise to 
such rulers about binding and loosing cannot be limited 
to a few years. Our Lord's enactment is no new one. It 
was always observed in the church of his ancient people. 
The church cannot dispense with a spiritual discipline 
which was necessary from the beginning. When em- 
perors and magistrates began to assume the Christian 
name, spiritual jurisdiction was not forthwith abolished. 
It was easily arranged that the two should not interfere. 
A Christian emperor could not wish to exempt himself 



278 



MY LIFE AKT> TIMES. 



from the common spiritual subjection. The Emperor 
Theodosius submitted to discipline by Ambrose. A good 
emperor is within the church, not above it, as said 
Ambrose. 

The slanderous accusation against Calvin, that he de- 
livered over Servetus to the secular arm to be burnt, is 
shown to be false by the principle which he has here 
announced. 

The object to be held in view by the spiritual jurisdic- 
tion of the church is, first (says Calvin), to prevent the 
occurrence of scandals, but when they arise, to remove 
them. Here two things are needful — first, that this 
spiritual power be altogether distinct from the power of 
the sword, and, secondly, that it be not administered by 
one man, but by a lawful consistory. Both these were 
observed in the purer times of the church. The severest 
punishment of the church, and, as it were, her last thun- 
derbolt, is excommunication, and that never to be used 
except in case of necessity. Moreover, this requires 
neither violence nor physical force, but gets its power 
solely from the word of God. In short, the jurisdiction 
of the ancient church was nothing but a practical declara- 
tion of what Paul says, "The weapons of our warfare are 
not carnal, but spiritual." As this warfare was carried 
on by the preaching of the gospel, so there was required to 
be connected with the office of the ministry the right of 
summoning those who are to be privately admonished or 
sharply rebuked ; the right, moreover, of keeping back 
from the Lord's supper those who could not be admitted 
without profaning this high ordinance. Hence, Paul inti- 
mates, in 1 Corinthians v. 12, the necessity of tribunals 
from the authority of which no believer is exempted. 

The power of these tribunals was not in any one man, 
but in the consistory of elders, which was, in the church, 
what a council is in the city. Cyprian (A. D. 250), 
speaking of these tribunals as they were in his time, asso- 
ciates the whole clergy with the bishop ; in another place 
he shows that, while the clergy presided, the people were 
not excluded from cognizance. Cyprian savs, "From the 
beginning of my bishopric, I determined to do nothing 
without the advice of the clergy, nothing without the con- 



calvin's institutes. 



279 



sent of the people.' 7 But the common and usual method 
was by the council of presbyters, of whom, as I have said, 
there were two classes. Some were for teaching, others 
were only censors of manners. This institution gradually 
degenerated from its primitive form, so that in the time of 
Ambrose (A. D. 397) the clergy alone had cognizance of 
ecclesiastical causes. Of this Ambrose complains in the 
following terms : "The ancient synagogue, and afterwards 
the church, had elders without whose advice nothing was 
done ; this has grown obsolete, by whose fault I know not, 
unless it be by the sloth, or rather the pride, of teachers 
who would have it seem that they only are somewhat." 
We see how indignant this holy man was because the bet- 
ter state was in some degree impaired, and yet the order 
which then existed was at least tolerable. What, then, 
had he seen those shapeless ruins which exhibit no trace 
of the ancient edifice ! How would he have lamented ! 
Chiefly (principio) contrary to what was right and law- 
ful, the bishop appropriated to himself what was given 
to the whole church, just as if the consul had expelled the 
senate, and assumed to himself the whole empire ; for, 
as the bishop is superior in rank to the others, so the au- 
thority of the consistory is greater than that of one in- 
dividual. It was, therefore, a gross iniquity when one 
man, transferring the common power to himself, paved 
the way for tyrannical license, suppressed and discarded 
the consistory ordained by the spirit of Christ. 

But, as one evil always leads to another evil, the 
bishops, now disdaining spiritual jurisdiction as a thing 
unworthy of their care, appoint officials to manage it in 
their place. I say nothing as to the character of these 
officials. All I say is, that they have gradually trans- 
formed the spiritual jurisdiction of the church consistory 
into a mere litigious forum for the settlement of civil 
matters ; yet they will tell you, we have admonitions, 
and we have excommunication. But this is the way God 
is mocked. Calvin describes the end of all their pro- 
ceedings, in their so-called spiritual jurisdiction, as the 
collection of money, and he shows how money is the 
means of escape from all their so-called spiritual disci- 
pline. He adds that not only they take charge, in this 



280 



MY LIFE A2s T D TIMES. 



fashion, of litigation about pecuniary affairs, but, also, 
that in this very same fashion do they censure vices, such 
as whoredom, lasciviousness, drunkenness, and like in- 
iquities, which they not only tolerate, but, by a kind of 
tacit approbation, through the reception of money, en- 
courage, both among the people and themselves. Out of 
many they summon a few, that they might not seem to 
connive too much (nimis socordes in connivendo) , or that 
they may mulct them in money. I say nothing of the 
plunder, rapine, peculation and sacrilege which are there 
committed. I repeat, that I say nothing of the kind of 
persons who are, for the most part, appointed by the 
bishops to act in their place. It is enough, and more than 
enough, that when the Romanists boast of their spiritual 
jurisdiction, we are ready to show that nothing is more 
contrary to the procedure instituted by Christ; that it 
has no more resemblance to ancient practice than dark- 
ness has to light. 

The twelfth chapter treats of the discipline of the 
church, and its principal use in censures and excommuni- 
cation. 

This chapter consists of two parts : I. The first part of 
ecclesiastical discipline, which respects the people, and 
is called common, consists of two parts : the former de- 
pending on the power of the keys, which is considered, 
(Sec. 1-14) ; the latter consisting in the appointment of 
times for fasting and prayer (Sec. 14-21). II. The sec- 
ond part of ecclesiastical discipline, relating to the clergy 
(Sec. 22-28), shall be passed over, as not relating to Cal- 
vin's doctrine of church government, being peculiar to 
the Romish church. 

Calvin speaks, first, of the common discipline, to which 
both clergy * and people are subject. If no society, even 
no moderate family, can do without right discipline, much 
more necessary is it to the church. As the saving doc- 
trine of Christ is the life of the church, so his discipline is 
its sinews, without which its members cannot be kept 
together. Therefore, all who wish to destroy or impede 



* In his French version of the Institutes, Calvin says, "I use this 
word, although it is improper." 



calyin's institutes. 



281 



it, seek the devastation of the church; for this must 
happen, if to preaching be not added private admonition, 
correction, and similar methods of maintaining doctrine. 
Discipline is a curb to restrain and tame those who war 
against doctrine ; or, it is a stimulus to arouse the indif- 
ferent ; or, it is a fatherly rod, by which those who make a 
grievous lapse are chastised in mercy. The beginnings of 
devastation, which we see already (in our Keformed 
Church), call for a remedy. 'Now the only remedy is 
this which Christ enjoins and the pious have always had 
in use. 

The first step in discipline is admonition. If any one 
is worthy of blame, he must allow himself to be admon- 
ished, and every one must study to admonish his brother 
when the case requires. Especially is admonition the 
duty of pastors and elders, as Paul shows when he taught 
publicly, and also from house to house, and then only felt 
that he was pure from the blood of all men. Thus only 
does doctrine obtain force and authority. If any one de- 
spises admonition, he is to be admonished again, and 
that before witnesses. If he still does not yield, the Sav- 
iour's injunction is that he must be summoned to the bar 
of the church, which is the consistory of elders, and there 
admonished more sharply. If not then subdued, he is to 
be debarred from the society of believers. 

But our Saviour is not there speaking of secret faults 
merely. We must, then, distinguish between private and 
public sins. It is of the former, that is, private offences, 
that Christ says you must go and speak with thy brother 
alone. Of open sins, that is, public ones, Paul says to 
Timothy, "Rebuke them before all." So Paul rebuked 
Peter when he dissembled, not privately, but in the face 
of the church. The legitimate course, therefore, will be 
to proceed in correcting secret faults by the steps men- 
tioned by Christ, and, in open sins, accompanied with 
public scandal, to proceed at once to solemn correction by 
the church. 

Another distinction Calvin makes is between mere de- 
linquencies and flagrant iniquities. For the latter a 
sharper remedy than admonition is necessary, as Paul 
shows in the case of the incestuous Corinthian, who is 



282 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



not only verbally rebuked, but excommunicated by him 
as soon as he was informed of his sin. 

Let the reader observe that Calvin describes Paul as ex- 
communicating this man because his apostleship gave him 
plenary power, but no such one-man power belongs to the 
settled church-state, although a foreign missionary, far re- 
moved from any presbyterial authority, can of right do 
the same. 

Calvin continues: "The spiritual jurisdiction, which 
the Lord has given to the church, is the best support to 
sound doctrine, the best foundation of order, and the best 
bond of unity. Therefore, when the church banishes 
from her communion those guilty of flagrant iniquity, as 
well as the contumacious, who, when duly admonished for 
lighter faults, hold God and his tribunal in contempt, she, 
so far from arrogating anything to herself, is just exer- 
cising a jurisdiction which she has received from the 
Lord. Moreover, the Lord has declared that the just sen- 
tence of the church is his own sentence, and that whatever 
she does on earth is ratified in heaven; for it is by the 
word of the Lord she condemns, and by the word of the 
Lord she receives back into favor. Those, I say, who 
trust that churches can long stand without this bond of 
discipline are mistaken." 

There are three ends of this severe discipline. The 
V first is that God may not be insulted by the flagitious lives 
of professing Christians. If he who has the dispensation 
of the Lord's supper admits to it any unworthy person 
whom he ought and is able to repel, he is as guilty of sac- 
rilege as if he had cast the Lord's body to the dogs. 
Chrysostom bitterly inveighs against those priests who, 
from fear of the great, dare not keep any one back. 
""Blood," says he, "will be required at your hands. . . . 
Let us not tremble at fasces, purple or diadems ; our 
power here is greater. Assuredly, I will sooner give up 
my body to death, and allow my blood to be shed, than be 
a partaker of that pollution." Therefore, lest this sacred 
mystery be profaned, selection is required in its adminis- 
tration, and this cannot be except by the jurisdiction of 
the church. A second end of discipline, is that the good 
may not, as usually happens, be corrupted by constant 



calvin's institutes. 



283 



communication with the wicked. To this Paul refers in 
commanding the Corinthians not to associate with the 
incestuous man. A third end of discipline is that the 
sinner may be ashamed. Accordingly, the apostle says 
that he had delivered the Corinthian to Satan. He gives 
him over to Satan, because the devil is without the church, 
as Christ is in the church. Some interpret this of a cer- 
tain infliction on the flesh, but this interpretation seems 
to me most improbable. 

These being the three ends of discipline, it remains to 
see in what way the church is to execute this discipline, 
which is made a part of jurisdiction (quae in jurisdic- 
tions posita est). (Calvin's meaning is that discipline 
depends on jurisdiction, for the word jurisdiction in- 
volves judgment and trial, and these always must precede 
execution.) He continues: And, first, we must remem- 
ber the distinction already made, that some sins are 
public, others are private or still more secret (alia privata 
vel occultiora). The public ones are those which are done 
not merely before one or two witnesses, but openly, and 
to the offence of the whole church. Secret, I call not 
those which are altogether concealed from men, such as 
those of hypocrites (these are the occultiora), but those of 
an intermediate description, which are not without wit- 
nesses, and which yet are not public. The former, that is, 
the public class, require not the steps which Christ enu- 
merates, but the church is to 'Summon the offender, and 
discipline him according to his fault. The second class, 
that is, the private or secret class, come not before the 
-church unless there is stubbornness, according to the rule 
of Christ, about not hearing two or three. 

Calvin divides sins into public and private, or secret; 
but it is evident that he does not use these two last terms 
as synonymous, for besides the secret (occulta), he has a 
•class of occultiora, which are the sins of the hypocrite en- 
tirely concealed from men, though known to God. He 
proceeds : "Also, in taking cognizance of offences, it is 
necessary to attend to the distinction between delin- 
quencies and flagrant iniquities. In lighter offences, 
severity is less required than kind and fatherly gentleness 
of rebuke, so as not to exasperate the offender, but draw 



284 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



him back to repentance. In flagrant iniquities, a sharper 
remedy must be used. The offender must, for a time, be 
denied the communion of the supper, until he gives proof 
of repentance. Paul discards the Corinthian from the 
church, and reprimands the Corinthians for having borne 
with him so long." 

Such was the method of the ancient church: the fla- 
grant offender was debarred the communion for a time, 
then he must humble himself before God, and testify re- 
pentance before the church. He must then observe cer- 
tain solemn rites as indications of repentance. Having 
thus given satisfaction to the church, he was received 
back by the laying on of hands by the bishop and clergy. 
Cyprian describes all this, but he adds that the consent of 
the people was at the same time required. 

Even princes submitted to this discipline in common 
with their subjects; and justly, for all diadems and 
sceptres should be subject to Christ. The Emperor Theo- 
dosius, when excommunicated by Ambrose for slaughter 
at Thessalonica, laid aside all his royal insignia, and pub- 
licly, in the church, bewailed the sin into which others 
had led him, imploring pardon with groans and tears. 
Great kings must think it no disgrace to prostrate them- 
selves before the King of kings, and to be censured by his 
church. I only add that the legitimate course in excom- 
munication is not for the elders to act by themselves, but 
always with the knowledge and approbation of the church. 

Calvin goes on to insist with Paul (2 Corinthians ii. 
7) , that in the exercise of discipline, the use of modera- 
tion will better subserve the ends of discipline than undue 
severity. He tells us the ancient church erred when they 
suspended from the communion for three, four or seven 
years, or even for life. When one had lapsed a second 
time, he was not admitted to a second repentance, but 
ejected for life. Sound judgment will always condemn 
this want of prudence. Here I rather disapprove the 
public custom than blame those who complied with it. 
Cyprian fully declares it was not with his own will he 
was thus over-rigorous. Chrysostom, who is somewhat 
more severe, still expresses himself similarly. As for 
Augustine, we know how indulgently he treated the Do- 



calvin's institutes. 



285 



natists, receiving back any from schism who declared their 
repentance. It was because a contrary method prevailed 
that they were obliged to give up their own judgment. 

Accordingly, as the church must act mildly in her dis- 
cipline, and not with undue severity, which Paul depre- 
cates, so private Christians should act charitably towards 
the lapsed. In one word, let us commit them to the divine 
judgment, rather than our own, because when it seems 
good to him, the worst are changed into the best. For the 
promise of our Saviour, about binding and loosing, is not 
to individual persons, but only to the church and her 
representatives ; moreover, it does not consign the ex- 
communicated to everlasting damnation, but conditions 
that upon their never repenting. Excommunication does 
not, like anathema, doom, and devote to eternal destruc- 
tion, but only forewarns to bring to repentance. If it 
succeeds, reconciliation and restoration to communion are 
ready to be given. Moreover, anathema is rarely, if ever, 
to be used. 

The reader should observe that, in general, Calvin 
means by excommunication only suspension from church 
communion, whether for a longer or a shorter time, but 
here he brings it into comparison with anathema. At 
the present time Protestants will broadly distinguish ex- 
communication, on the one hand, from suspension, as well 
as, on the other hand, from anathema. In a word, Protes- 
tants never anathematize. 

The reformer next points out to private persons, as well 
as ministers, the duty of being patient with the imper- 
fections of church discipline, because the task is so diffi- 
cult. He quotes from Augustine, that neither is strict- 
ness of discipline to be neglected, nor the bonds of society 
to be burst by intemperate correction. On the one hand, 
that prudence is to be used which our Lord requires, "lest 
while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat 
with them." On the other hand, he who neglects to ad- 
monish, accuse and correct the bad, although he neither 
favors them nor sins with them, is guilty before the Lord ; 
then he concludes from Cyprian: Let a man mercifully 
correct what he can ; what he cannot correct, let him bear 
patiently, and in love bewail and lament. 



286 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



Calvin says Augustine was moved to take these posi- 
tions by the moroseness of the Donatists in his time, who, 
because they saw faults in the church not disciplined with 
due severity, bitterly inveighed against the bishops as 
traitors, and then, by an impious schism, separated them- 
selves from the flock of Christ. Similar is the conduct of 
the Anabaptists in the present day, acknowledging no as- 
sembly as a church of Christ unless, clothed with angelic 
perfection, they overthrow, under pretense of zeal, every- 
thing that tends to edification. Augustine tells us that 
the Donatists, out of zeal for their own disputes, at- 
tempted to draw members of the church entirely away. 
Swollen with pride, raving with petulance, insidious in 
calumny, turbulent in sedition, they covered themselves- 
with a stern severity, that it might not be seen how void 
they were of truth. The correction of a brother's fault, 
which scripture says must be done with moderation, they 
pervert to sacrilegious schism and purposes of excision. 
Thus Satan transforms himself into an angel of light. 

One thing Augustine specially commends, viz., that if 
the contagion of sin has seized the multitude, strict dis- 
cipline must not be attempted with them. That would 
only disturb the weak good, without correcting the 
wicked proud. Such was his own practice. In writing to 
Aurelius, Bishop of Carthage, about the prevalence of 
drunkenness in Africa, a vice so severely condemned in 
scripture, he advises a council of bishops to devise some 
remedial plans to be pursued, adding immediately that, 
in his opinion, no harsh or imperious measures would suit 
the case. Severity can only be exercised against the sins 
of the few. With a multitude of offenders, more is to be 
effected by teaching than commanding, by admonishing 
than threatening. 

Fasting and Prayer, and Other Religious Observances. 

The appointment of such days by pastors is not strictly 
included in the power of the keys, but has prevailed in 
the church, not only from the time of the apostles, but 
even from the times of the law and the prophets. The 
apostles followed a course not new to the people of God., 



calvin's institutes. 



287 



and which they foresaw would be useful to the church. 
Whenever, therefore, a religious controversy arises which 
either a council or an ecclesiastical tribunal behooves to 
decide: whenever a minister is to be chosen; in short, 
whenever any matter of difficulty or great importance is 
under consideration ; on the other hand, when manifesta- 
tions of the divine anger appears, as war, pestilence and 
famine — the sacred and salutary custom of pastors ex- 
horting to fasting and prayer has always been observed in 
the church. Though some may question whether fasting 
is suited to the church, none will question as to prayer. 
We certainly have, however, the example of the apostles 
as to fasting. Very many regard it as not very necessary, 
others reject it altogether, and some hold that it tends to 
superstition, not understanding what utility there can be 
in it. Let us, therefore, consider the question. 

A holy and lawful fast has three ends in view. The 
first is to mortify and subdue the flesh; the second, to 
prepare for prayer and meditation ; the third, to evidence 
humility when we are confessing guilt. The first of these 
does not apply so well to public fasting, because all have 
not the necessary constitution nor due health, and hence 
applies better to private fasting. The second and third 
apply both to the whole church, and to each individual ; 
for sometimes the Lord smites the whole nation with dire- 
ful calamity, while sometimes it is confined to one in- 
dividual and his family; in either place, it behooves to 
plead guilty and confess guilt. Indeed, the thing is 
properly a feeling of the mind, and then the feeling will 
be externally manifested. 

Thus, when Paul and Barnabas were to be ordained to 
the important work of carrying the gospel to the heathen, 
the Christians of Antioch observed fasting and prayer 
(Acts xiii. 3) ; when Paul and Barnabas ordained elders 
in every church, it was with fasting and prayer (Acts xiv. 
23) ; when Luke says that Anna served God day and 
night with fasting and prayer, he simply intimates that 
in this way she trained herself to assiduity in prayer 
(Luke ii. 37) ; thus I^ehemiah, by fasting and prayer 
with more intense earnestness, prayed to God for the de- 
liverance of his people (Eehemiah i. 4) ; for this reason 



288 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



Paul advised married believers to abstinence for a time 
(1 Corinthians vii. 5). 

If the Israelitish church, formed and constituted by 
the Lord himself, made use of public fasting in token of 
sadness, why may we not do the same ? It is indeed an 
external ceremony, but, like all the ceremonies appointed 
to Israel (Joel ii. 15), terminated in Christ. I^ay, in the 
present day, it is an admirable help to believers as it 
always was. Accordingly, when our Saviour excuses his 
apostles for not fasting, he does not say that fasting is 
abrogated, but only reserves it for calamitous times, and 
conjoins it with mourning (Matthew ix. 35 ; Luke v. 34). 

But let us define what is fasting. It is not simply a 
restrained and sparing use of food, because a Christian 
life ought always to be tempered with frugality and so- 
briety. But fasting is to retrench somewhat from our 
accustomed mode of living for one day or for a certain 
period, and to perform those actions of repentance, hu- 
miliation, thanksgiving, intercession and prayer, for the 
sake of which the fast was appointed. 

But unless pastors observe the greatest care, fasting 
may give rise to sundry evils, much worse than no fasting 
at all. The first thing to be feared is the encroachment 
of superstition. Joel ii. 13 says, "Rend your hearts, and 
not your garments." Tasting is of no value in the sight 
of God unless accompanied with true dissatisfaction with 
sin and with one's self, true humiliation and true grief, 
from the fear of God. Fasting is only an inferior help to 
these internal affections. God abominates nothing more 
than the substitution of outward signs for real exercises 
of the heart. Accordingly, Isaiah inveighs against the 
hypocrisy of the Jews, "Is this such a fast as I have 
chosen" (Isaiah lviii. 5-7). Another danger to watch 
against is the idea that fasting is a work involving merit. 
In itself it is a thing indifferent. It is of no importance 
except as to the end for which employed. It is most per- 
nicious to confound this with works enjoined by God as 
necessary in themselves. This Manichean dream Augus- 
tine severely rebukes. A third error is the exacting of 
fasting with greater severity and rigor as a principal duty, 
and the extolling of it with such encomiums as make the 



CALVIN^ INSTITUTES. 



289 



people think they have done something admirable when 
they have fasted. Therefore, I do not entirely excuse 
some ancient writers as having sown seeds of superstition 
by their extravagant praises of fasting ; for, at that time, 
the superstitious observance of Lent had general preva- 
lence, both the vulgar imagining that they thereby per- 
formed some excellent service to God, and the very pas- 
tors praising it as a holy imitation of Christ. Christ did 
not fast forty days as an example to others, but to show 
that his gospel was not of men, but had come from heaven. 
Strange that so many men of acute judgment should fall 
into this gross delusion which so many clear reasons 
refute. 1, Christ did not fast repeatedly, as if ordaining 
an anniversary fast, but only once as preparing to pro- 
mulgate the gospel. 2, He did not fast after the manner 
of men, as giving them an example for their imitation. 
It was rather an example to excite their admiration. 3, 
In short, his fast was like that of Moses, when he received 
the law from God. The miracle of Moses' forty days' 
fast was to establish the law, and it behooved to be per- 
formed also by Christ, that the gospel might not seem 
inferior. But no one among the Israelites ever set up 
such a fast to imitate Moses, nor did any of the holy 
prophets and fathers do the like. It is only false zeal 
and egregious superstition to fast forty days in imita- 
tion of Christ. 

Worse times followed. To the absurd zeal of the com- 
mon people, on the side of the bishops were added igno- 
rance and rudeness, lust of power and tyrannical rigor. 
Impious laws were passed, binding the conscience in 
deadly chains. The eating of flesh was forbidden, as if 
a man were contaminated by it. Sacrilegious opinions 
were added, one after another, until all became an abyss 
of error. They make a mock of God ; for in the use of 
the most exquisite delicacies they claim the praise of fast- 
ing. I^ever was there greater abundance or variety or 
savoriness of food. Meantime, the holiest of them were 
wallowing foully. The highest worship of God was to 
abstain from flesh, though indulging in every kind of 
delicacy ; on the other hand, it was the greatest impiety, 
scarcely to be expiated by death, if one should taste a 



290 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



bit of bacon or rancid flesh with his bread ; Jerome writes 
to ISTepotian of these things in his day. What was then 
the fanlt of a few is now common among all the rich : 
they do not fast for any other purpose than to feast after- 
ward more richly and luxuriously. In Sermon I. on 
Easter Day, Bernard censures, among others, princes 
also for longing, during the time of Lent, for the ap- 
proaching festival of our Lord's resurrection, that they 
might indulge more freely. 

The thirteenth chapter treats of vows and the miserable 
entanglements caused by vowing rashly. This chapter 
consists of two parts: I. Of vows in general (Sec. 1-8). 
IT. Of monastic vows, and especially of the vow of celi- 
bacy (Sec. S— 21), all of which will be passed over. 

Calvin begins the discussion by deploring how the free 
church of Christ, whose liberty was purchased by his 
blood, is, through the craft of Satan, burdened with a 
cruel tyranny, and almost buried under a mass of human 
traditions; but not the church only, each individual 
member, tyrannized over by his own conscience, laying 
burdens on himself. This has been the result of men 
undertaking to add, through vows, stronger obligations 
than God himself had put upon them. We have already 
shown (Book II., Chap, viii., Sec. 5) that everything 
necessary for a pious and holy life is comprehended in the 
law; also that the Lord, the better to dissuade us from 
devising new works, included the whole of righteousness 
in simple obedience to his will. It is easy, then, to see- 
that all factitious worship, devised by us for the service of 
God, is not in the least degree acceptable to him, however 
pleasing it may be to us. In many texts, God not only 
rejects, but expresses abhorrence of such worship. Hence 
arises the doubt in regard to vows which are made with- 
out any express authority from the word of God. Can 
they be duly made by Christian men, and to what extent 
are they binding ? We are careful what we promise to 
man, much more careful should we be what vows we make 
to God. Here superstition has in all ages prevailed, not 
only with heathen people, but amongst Christians as well. 
Nothing can be less becoming, but nothing has been more 
usual. Despising the law of God, mankind have burned 



CAlWIx's INSTITUTES. 



291 



with insane zeal for making vows according to any 
dreamy notions which they themselves have conceived. 
When we treat of vows, therefore, Ave are not discussing a 
superfluous question. 

Three things must now be considered. 1, Who is it to 
whom we make vows I 2, What are we that make them ? 
3, With what intent do we make them I In regard to the 
first, we should consider that it is God to whom we vow, 
and that he very greatly delights in our obedience, and as 
much abominates will-worship. We must not, therefore, 
arrogate to ourselves a license to promise anything to 
God without his assurance that it will please him. Paul's 
doctrine, that whatsoever is not of faith is sin, while it ex- 
tends to matters of every kind, applies especially to cases 
where Ave are making an offering to God. In vows, then, 
our first precaution must be to attempt nothing rashly; 
and we shall be safe from the danger of rashness, when 
we have God going before and dictating from his word 
what will be acceptable. 

The second point is that Ave measure our strength, and 
consider our vocation, so as not to neglect the blessing of 
liberty, which God has conferred upon us. Tor he who 
vows what is not within his means, or is at variance Avith 
his calling, is rash; while he who contemns the benefi- 
cence of God in giving him so much liberty, is ungrateful. 
Every man should have respect to the measure of grace 
bestowed on him, as Paul enjoins (Eomans xii. 3 ; 1 
Corinthians xii. 4), lest, by arrogating too much to him- 
self, he fall headlong. Tor example, the JeAvs, who 
vowed not to eat or drink until they had assassinated 
Paul, had no power over Paul's life. Thus Jephthah suf- 
fered for his folly, when, with precipitate fervor, he made 
a rash vow (Judges xi. 30). Of this class, the first place 
for insane audacity belongs to the vow of celibacy by the 
priests, monks and nuns, ignorant so dreadfully of hu- 
man weakness. 

The third point is with what intention the vow is 
made. God looks at the heart ; according to the purpose 
of the mind, the same thing may at one time please and be 
acceptable to him. and at another be most displeasing. If 
you vow total abstinence from wine, as of holiness, or as 



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MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



if it were sin to drink it, you are superstitious; but if 
you have some end in view, which is not perverse, no one 
can disapprove. So far as I can see, there are four ends 
to which our vows may be properly directed ; two of these 
refer to the past, and two to the future. To the past be- 
long vows of thanksgiving for favors received, or for pun- 
ishment on ourselves for faults committed ; vows of 
thanksgiving, as Jacob's (Genesis xxviii. 20), and of 
peace offerings to the Lord, as of kings of old, when going 
to war, if they were victorious. Thus, also, are to be 
understood all the passages in the Psalms which speak of 
vows (Ps. xxi. 25 ; lvi. 12 ; cxvi. 14, 18). These are law- 
ful in these days, as thank-offerings to the Lord for mercy 
received or desired — for they accord with the word of 
God. Again, to the past refers the vow of repentance or 
self-punishment. A man, by gluttonous indulgence, hav- 
ing fallen into iniquity, renounces luxuries for a time, 
and trains himself to temperance, and, therefore, binds 
himself with a vow, that he may stand more firmly. Yet 
I do not lay this down as a law for all who have similarly 
offended ; I merely speak of what may be done if one 
thinks such a vow could be useful to him. Thus, while I 
hold it lawful to make such a vow, I, at the same time, 
consider it not obligatory. 

The vows that relate to the future are either cautions or 
stimuli. A man sometimes sees that in the use of a thing 
that is lawful, he cannot restrain himself, and so falls into 
evil, and he cuts off himself for a time by a vow from the 
use of that thing. If a man finds some bodily ornament 
brings him into peril, and yet he is allured by cupidity 
to long for it, why not impose a curb on his desires by a 
vow, and so free himself from danger ? If one becomes 
oblivious or sluggish in the duties of piety, why not, by a 
vow, both awaken his memory and shake off his sloth? 
These are helps to infirmity, and may be used to advan- 
tage by the ignorant and imperfect. Hence we hold that 
vows, having respect to one of these four ends, especially 
in external things, are lawful, provided they are sup- 
ported by the approbation of God, are suitable to our 
calling, and are limited to the measure of grace bestowed 
upon us. 



calyin's institutes. 



293 



YVe now see what view ought to be taken of all vows. 
There is one vow common to all believers ; it is taken at 
baptism, confirmed in our catechising and partaking of 
the Lord's supper. The sacraments are a kind of mutual 
contracts, by which the Lord conveys his mercy to us, and 
by it eternal life; on our side, we vow obedience. The 
substance of the vow is that we renounce Satan, and bind 
ourselves to the service of God. This vow is certainly 
sanctioned by scripture, nay, exacted from all the chil- 
dren of God, and is holy and salutary, yet no man keeps 
or can keep it, but this stipulation is included in the cov- 
enant of grace, which comprehends forgiveness of sins 
and the spirit of holiness, so that the promise, which we 
there make, but do not keep, is combined with entreaty 
for pardon, and petition for assistance. Any one can 
easily estimate the character of each single vow by re- 
membering the three given rules. But I do not advise 
every day making vows that are holy. I can give no pre- 
cept as to time or number, yet, if any will take my advice, 
he will not undertake any but what are sober and tem- 
porary. If ever and anon you launch out into vows, the 
solemnity will be lost by the frequency, and you will fall 
into superstition. If you bind yourself by a perpetual 
vow, you will have great trouble and annoyance in getting 
free, or, worn out by length of time, you will at length 
make bold to break it. 

Tried by these rules, what superstitions the world has 
labored under for ages past ! One vows that he will ab- 
stain from wine, as if this were in itself an acceptable ser- 
vice to God. Another binds himself to fast, another to 
abstain from fiesh on certain days, making that more 
holy than other days. Things much more boyish were 
vowed, but not by boys. It became great wisdom to make 
votive pilgrimages to holy places, and sometimes to per- 
form the journey on foot, or with the body half naked, 
that the greater merit might be acquired by the greater 
fatigue. All these things, tried by the rules we have laid 
down, will be found, not only empty and nugatory, but 
filled with manifest impiety. Be the judgment of the flesh 
what it may, God abhors nothing more than factitious 
worship. To these are added pernicious and damnable 



294 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



notions, hypocrites, after performing such frivolities, 
thinking that they have acquired no ordinary righteous- 
ness, placing the substance of piety in external observ- 
ances, and despising all others who appear less careful in 
regard to them. 

Part II. — Of the Sacraments. 

The fourteenth chapter treats of the sacraments. This 
chapter consists of two principal parts : L Of sacraments 
in general. The sum of the doctrine stated (Sec. 1-6). 
Two classes of opponents to be guarded against, viz., 
those who undervalue the power of the sacraments, and 
those who attribute too much to the sacraments (Sec. 
7-17). All these will be passed over, the first-named 
being the Anabaptists, and the second being the Roman- 
ists. II. Of the sacraments in particular, both of the Old 
and the New Testaments. Their scope and meaning 
(Sec. 18-22). Refutation of those who have either too 
high or too low ideas of the sacraments (Sec. 23-26), 
which will be passed over. 

A sacrament is an external sign, by which the Lord 
seals on our consciences his promise of good-will toward 
us, in order to sustain the weakness of our faith, and we, 
in our turn, testify our piety towards him, both before 
himself, and before angels and men. 

More briefly, we may define it thus: A testimony of 
the divine favor toward us, confirmed by an external sign, 
with a corresponding attestation of our faith towards him. 

Both these definitions agree with Augustine's — a vis- 
ible sign of a sacred thing, or a visible form of an invis- 
ible grace. This is briefer, but somewhat obscure. I 
prefer to make the definition fuller, in order that it may 
be more plain to all. 

Calvin next explains how these ordinances come to be 
called sacraments. The old interpreter, whenever he 
wished to render the Greek term fioar/jpcov into Latin, 
specially when used with reference to divine things, em- 
ployed the word sacr amentum. Thus in Ephesians i. 9, 
"Having made known unto us the mystery (sacramen- 
tum) of his will." So, also, Ephesians iii. 2 ; Colossians 
i. 26; 1 Timothy iii. 16. He was unwilling to use the 



calvin's institutes. 



295 



word arcanum, lest it should seem beneath the magnitude 
of the thing meant. When the thing, therefore, was 
sacred and secret, he used the term sacramentum. In 
this sense, it frequently occurs in ecclesiastical writers. 
Thus it was that this term was applied to such ordinances 
as give an august representation of things spiritual and 
sublime. 

It follows from the definition given, that there never is 
a sacrament without an antecedent promise to the sacra- 
ment, being an appendage to confirm the promise as with 
a seal. In this way, God provides, first, for our ignorance 
and sluggishness, and, secondly, for our infirmity; but 
properly speaking, the sacrament does not confirm his 
word, but only establishes us in the faith of it; for the 
truth of God is in itself sufficiently stable and certain. 
It cannot receive confirmation from any other quarter. 
But, as our faith is slender and weak, so, if not propped 
up on every side and supported by all kinds of means, it 
is forthwith shaken, tossed to and fro, wavers and even 
falls. But here our merciful Lord, in his boundless con- 
descension, so accommodates himself to our capacity, that 
seeing how, from our animal nature, we are always creep- 
ing on the ground, and cleaving to the flesh, having no 
thought of what is spiritual, and not even forming an idea 
of it, he declines not, by means of these earthly elements, 
to lead us to himself ; and, even in the flesh, to exhibit a 
mirror of spiritual blessings ;, for, as Chrysostom says 
(Horn. 60, ad Popul.), "Were we incorporeal, he would 
give us these things in a naked and incorporeal form. 
Now, because our souls are implanted in bodies, he de- 
livers spiritual things under things visible. Not that 
the qualities, which are set before us in the sacraments, 
are inherent in the nature of the things, but God gives 
them this signification." 

When we say the sacrament consists of the word and 
the sign, we are not to refer to the word of consecration, 
muttered without meaning and without faith, but the 
preached word, which makes us understand what the 
sign means. Calvin describes the Romish formula of 
consecration, before his day, as muttered by the priest 
in Latin, while the people, without understanding, looked 



296 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



stupidly on. Nay, this was done for the express purpose 
of preventing any instruction from thereby reaching the 
people. At length, superstition rose to such a height that 
it was thought the consecration was not duly performed 
except in a low grumble, which few could hear. Very 
different is the doctrine of Augustine, who says, "Let the 
word be added to the sign, and it becomes a sacrament." 
You see how he required preaching to the production of 
faith. So the apostle says, "This is the word of faith 
which we preach" (Romans x. 8 ; Acts xv. 9 ; 1 Peter 
iii. 21). And there is not the least doubt as to what 
Christ did, and commanded us to do ; nor as to what the 
apostles followed, and a purer church observed. Nay, 
from the very beginning, whenever God offered any sign 
to the holy patriarchs, it was inseparably attached to doc- 
trine. Therefore, wherever we hear mention of the sac- 
ramental word, let us understand the promise, which, 
proclaimed aloud by the minister, leads the people by the 
hand to that to which the sign tends and directs us. 

The sacramental signs are like seals affixed to diplomas, 
and other public deeds ; in a blank paper they are noth- 
ing, but to what is written they add much. Nor is this a 
fiction of our own, for Paul himself uses it, terming cir- 
cumcision a seal in Romans iv. 11, where he maintains 
that the sacrament of circumcision was to Abraham an 
attestation to the covenant, by the faith of which he had 
been previously justified. We preach that the promise 
in the covenant is sealed by the sacrament, since it is 
plain, from the promises themselves, that one promise 
confirms another. Sacraments are the clearest promises, 
for they are promises pictured to the eye. But how can 
a carnal seal confirm a spiritual promise ? The believer's 
faith looks through the carnal spectacle, and rises to the 
sublime mystery hidden in the sacraments. 

As the Lord calls his promises covenants (Genesis vi. 
18; ix. 9; xvii. 2), and sacraments signs of the cove- 
nants, so something similar may be inferred from human 
covenants, viz., that the words give meaning to the signs. 
The slaughter of a hog might mean nothing. The joining 
of hands might mean battle as well as friendship. The 
use of sacraments is to confirm promises, and because we 



CALVIN S INSTITUTES. 



297 



are carnal, carnal objects are used in our spiritual train- 
ing to exhibit and establish the promise, just as nurses 
lead children by the hand. Hence Augustine says a sac- 
rament is a promise exhibited to the eye, while preaching 
sets it forth to the ear. There are other similitudes 
which plainly designate the sacraments as appendages to 
the word. They may be called the pillars of our faith, 
which rest on the word, as a building on its foundation, 
though pillars may be used to still further strengthen it. 
Or they may be called mirrors, in which we may contem- 
plate the riches of the glory of his grace revealed in his 
word. 

Calvin now proceeds to defend the sacraments against 
two classes of opponents — first, the Anabaptists, who 
undervalue them (in Sec. 7-13), and, secondly, the Ro- 
manists (in Sec. 14-17), who ascribe to them a secret 
virtue nowhere attributed to them by the Lord. All these 
will be passed over, to come to the concluding sections 
(18-26) of the sacraments in particular, both of the Old 
and Xew Testaments, their scope and meaning. 

Sacraments of Old and New Testaments in Particular,. 

Xow, therefore, we have this fixed point, regarding 
sacraments, that their only office does not differ from that 
of the word, which is to hold forth Christ to us, and the 
treasures of divine grace, which are in him. They have 
no inherent virtue. They confer nothing, avail nothing 
without faith ; in other words, we get nothing else from 
them — only more of what we bring to them. Their only 
ofiice is to attest the benevolence of the Lord to us. They 
only avail, as accompanied by the Holy Spirit, enabling 
us to receive this testimony, as the vessel which is not 
open cannot receive the liquid which is poured out 
upon it. 

Sacraments, then, include all the signs God ever gave 
to confirm his promises to men. Some of these have been 
natural objects ; some miracles. Of the former class 
were the tree of life to Adam and Eve; the rainbow 
in the cloud to jSoah. There was no change in the thing?, 
but only a new character impressed on them, which even 
at this day we behold in the rainbow. It is just so with 



298 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



the bullion turned into coin ; it has received no more in- 
trinsic value, but legally a much greater. Of the second 
class, were the smoking flax to Abraham, of Gideon's 
fleece, dewy or dry, and the going back of the shadow on 
Hezekiah's dial. 

We proceed to speak of the ordinary sacraments given 
by God to bring up his worshippers and servants in one 
faith, and the confession of that faith ; for, as Augustine 
Siiys, "In no name of religion, true or false, can men be 
assembled religiously, except by some common use of 
visible signs." Thus the sacraments, given to the church, 
are not simple signs, but sacred, divine ceremonies, or, 
as Chrysostom calls them, "pactions between God and 
men," to cherish faith and to testify their religion. 

The sacraments given to the Old Testament church 
were, first, circumcision, and then afterwards purifica- 
tions, sacrifices, and rites of the Mosaic law. To the 
Christian church were given only baptism and the Lord's 
supper. You may call the laying on of hands a sacra- 
ment, if you please, but certainly it was not a sacrament 
of the whole church. Now the only difference between 
the sacraments of the Old Testament church and those 
of the New Testament church is, that the former pointed 
forwards to Christ as expected, while the latter pointed 
backwards to him as having already come ; for God never 
made a promise to fallen man except in Christ, and, 
therefore, when sacraments remind us of any promise, 
they must always remind us of, and lead us to, Christ. 

Let us consider singly the signification of the Jewish 
sacraments. First, circumcision set forth the sinfulness 
of our nature ; something which was to be cut off. It 
was also a memorial to them of the promise to Abraham 
of a saving seed, viz., Christ (in Gal. v. 16), who should 
bless all nations, and through whom they should recover 
all they had lost in Adam. Therefore, it was to them, as 
it had been to Abraham, a sign and seal of the righteous- 
ness of faith, by which they received certain assurance 
that, if they waited for the Lord, it would be accepted by 
God for righteousness. But in Chapter XVI., Sec. 3, 4, 
we shall have better opportunity to follow up the com- 
parison between circumcision and baptism. 



calvin's institutes. 



299 



Secondly, their washings and purifications placed 
under their eye the uneleanness and pollution with which 
they were naturally contaminated, and promised another 
laver. in which all their impurities might be washed 
.away. 

Thirdly, their sacrifices convicted them of their guilti- 
ness, and the necessity of some satisfaction to divine jus- 
tice, so that there must be a high priest between God and 
man, and a victim to be sacrificed to this justice. The 
high priest was Christ, and he was himself the victim, 
shedding his own blood to appease divine wrath, and by 
his obedience, which was perfect, abolished the disobedi- 
ence of man. 

As to the Christian sacraments, they still more clearly 
set forth Christ — baptism, that Ave are washed and puri- 
fied ; the eucharist, that we are redeemed. Ablution is 
figured by water, satisfaction by blood. Both are found 
in Christ, who, as John says, came by water and blood; 
that is, to purify and redeem. Of this, John also says, 
there are three witnesses, the Spirit, and the water, and 
the blood ; but the Spirit is the chief witness, who gives 
us the full assurance of this testimony. And this sub- 
lime mystery was illustriously displayed on the cross of 
Christ, when both water and blood poured forth from 
his side. Of these Xew Testament sacraments we shall 
shortly treat at greater length. 

The fifteenth chapter treats of baptism in two parts. 
The first part sets before us the two ends of baptism (Sec. 
1-13). The second part may be reduced to four heads. 
Of the use of baptism (Sec. 11, Id). Of the worthiness 
or unworthiness of the minister (Sec. 16-18). Of the 
corruptions by which this sacrament was polluted (Sec. 
19). To whom reference is had in the dispensation (Sec. 
20-22). 

Baptism is the initiatory sign by which we are ad- 
mitted to the fellowship of the church. The two ends of 
baptism (in common with all other sacraments) are, first, 
that it may minister to our faith in him, and, secondly, 
serve for one confession of him before men. We shall ex- 
plain both these ends in their order. 

First. Baptism contributes to our faith three things. 



300 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



One is, that it becomes a sign to us of our purification, or, 
to speak more plainly, it is an assurance to us of our for- 
giveness, and of our sins being so covered and effaced 
that they will never come into his sight, never be men- 
tioned, never imputed ; for we are to receive baptism in 
connection with the promise, "He that believeth and is 
baptized shall be saved" (Mark xvi. 16). 

In the same way, Paul says Christ loved the church, 
and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and 
cleanse it with the washing of water by the word (Eph. v. 
25, 26) ; the same, also, is said in Titus iii. 5, and in 1 
Peter iii. 21. Baptism, then, is by no means the cause of 
salvation ; only the knowledge and certainty of it is testi- 
fied and seen in this sacrament. By it the message of our 
ablution and sanctification is sealed — as in the word it is 
announced. The only purification which baptism prom- 
ises is that which is effected by the sprinkling of the blood 
of Christ, who is figured by water from the resemblance 
between washing and cleansing. Who, then, dare ascribe 
to the water the cleansing which we receive from the blood 
of Christ ? since the sacrament leads us away from the 
visible element that we may fix our minds on Christ 
alone. 

Calvin has here in mind the church of Eome, which 
makes sacraments the causes of grace, whilst we regard 
them as only a means through faith. 

]Si"or is baptism bestowed only with reference to past 
sins, for by it we are washed and purified once for the 
whole of our life. It was from that error that some, in 
ancient times, refused to be received into the church by 
baptism, until they should be drawing their last breath, 
so that they might be washed for all their past. Ancient 
bishops frequently inveigh against this preposterous pre- 
caution. On the contrary, as often as we fall, after being 
baptized, we must recall to mind that in our baptism we 
were made certain and secure of the remission of all our 
sins, future, as well as past. For baptism, once truly ad- 
ministered, cannot be abolished by subsequent sins ; for 
therein was pledged to us the purity of Christ, which is 
always in force, not to be destroyed by any stain. Xor 
must we hence assume a license of sinning for the future. 



calvin's institutes. 



301 



The truth we have just set forth is only for those who, 
when they have sinned, groan, and are burdened, and op- 
pressed, that they may have somewhat to support them. 
Paul, indeed, says that Christ is our propitiation for sins 
that are past (Romans iii. 25) ; but he does not thereby 
deny that constant and perpetual forgiveness of sins is 
thereby obtained even till death. He only intimates that 
it is designed by the Father for those poor sinners, who, 
wounded by remorse of conscience, sigh for the physician. 
To these Paul here offers the mercy of God. Those who, 
from hopes of impurity, seek a license for sin, only pro- 
voke the wrath and justice of God. 

A second contribution by baptism to our faith in 
Christ is its showing us our being dead with Christ, and 
having new life in him. "Know ye not," says the apostle, 
in Romans vi. 3-6, "that when baptized into Christ, we 
were baptized into his death ? Therefore, we are buried 
with him by baptism into death, that we should walk 
in newness of life." In these passages he shows that 
Christ, by baptism, has made us partakers of his death, 
ingrafting us into that death; for, as the twig derives 
substance and nourishment from the root to which it is 
attached, so those who are baptized in true faith, truly 
feel the efficacy of Christ's death in the mortification of 
their flesh (that is, their ,old nature), and the efficacy of 
his resurrection in the quickening of the Spirit (that is, 
their new-born nature). On this he founds his exhorta- 
tion, that if we are Christians, we should die unto sin, 
and live unto righteousness. In this same sense, he 
speaks in Colossians ii. 12, and Titus iii. 5. In baptism, 
we are promised, first, the free pardon of sins and impu- 
tation of righteousness, and, secondly, the grace of the 
Holy Spirit to form us again to newness of life. 

The third advantage which our faith in Christ re- 
ceives from baptism is its assuring us not only that we 
are dead with Christ, and alive with Christ, but that we 
are also so united to him as to be partakers of all the good 
things that are his (omnium ejus bonorum) ; for he con- 
secrated baptism in his own body, that he might have it 
as the firmest bond of union and fellowship with us. 
Hence Paul proves us to be the sons of God, from the 



302 



MY LIFE A3TD TIMES. 



fact that we put on Christ in our baptism. Thus we see,, 
in Christ, the filling up, or perfecting (complementum) , 
of our baptism, whom, for this reason, we call the proper 
object, the object we aim at in baptism. Hence it is not 
strange if the apostles are reported to have baptized in 
the name of Christ, though they were commanded to bap- 
tize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost (Acts 
viii. 16 ; xix. 5 ; Matthew xxviii. 19) ; for all the divine 
gifts held forth in baptism are found in Christ alone. 
And yet it cannot but be that he who baptizes in the name 
of Christ has also invoked the name of the Father and the 
Spirit. We are cleansed by his blood, because our Father 
appointed him Mediator to effect our reconciliation with 
himself. Regeneration we obtain from his death and 
resurrection, only as sanctified by his Spirit, we are im- 
bued with a new and spiritual nature. Thus, first, John 
baptized, and thus, afterwards, the apostles, by the bap- 
tism of repentance for the remission of sins, understand- 
ing by the term repentance, regeneration, and by the re- 
mission of sins, ablutions. 

It is, therefore, perfectly certain that John received 
the very same commission that was afterward given to the 
apostles, because the doctrine of both was the same. Both 
baptized unto repentance and remission of sins in the 
name of Christ, from whom repentance and remission 
proceed. Moreover, John pointed out Christ as the Lamb 
of God, and what more could the apostles add to that \ 
Ancient writers deny the sameness, as both Chrysostom 
and Augustine, but their opinions cannot shake the cer- 
tainty of scripture. Luke asserts that John preached the 
baptism of repentance for the remission of sins (Luke iii. 
3). The only difference is, that John baptized in the 
name of him who was to come ; the apostles in the name 
of him who had already come (Luke iii. 16 ; Acts xix. 4). 

If John's baptism never involved the miraculous gifts- 
of the Spirit, neither did the baptisms of the apostles dur- 
ing Christ's life-time involve those gifts ; yet they are 
all admitted to be Christian baptisms. I suppose that the 
thing which imposed on the ancient writers, and made 
them deny the sameness of the baptisms in question, was 
because they thought the twelve disciples at Ephesus, who 



CALVIN S INSTITUTES. 



303 



received the baptism of John, were again baptized by 
Paul (Acts xix. 3-5). When John discriminates (Matt, 
iii. 11), it is not between his baptism and Christian bap- 
tism; he merely contrasted his own person with that of 
Christ, John baptizing only with water and our Lord 
with the Spirit on the day of Pentecost in tongues of fire. 
What can any minister now say more than that he bap- 
tizes with water ? 

The things which we have said respecting mortifica- 
tion and ablution, were adumbrated to Israel, who were, 
as the apostle said, baptized both in the cloud and in the 
sea (1 Cor. x. 2). Mortification was figured when the 
Lord carried them through the sea, but drowned Pharaoh 
and his hosts. In this way he promises us, and by a sign, 
which is baptism, shows us that he leads, and mightily 
delivers us from our bondage of sin ; we thus see our 
Pharaoh, which is the devil, drowned, though he still tries 
to harass us, as the Israelites were terrified by the body 
of Pharaoh cast out upon the shore, though he could not 
hurt them. Our adversary still threatens, shows his arm, 
and is felt, but cannot conquer. On the other hand, the 
cloud was a symbol of purification and ablution (Num. 
ix. 18), for it covered and protected Israel from the heat 
of the sun, and so in baptism, we perceive that we are 
covered and protected by the blood of Christ, lest the 
wrath of God, that intolerable flame, should lie upon us. 
Thus the fathers, whom God Jiad adopted as heirs, were 
furnished with both badges. 

Some long ago taught, and some still maintain, that by 
baptism we are set free from original sin, and the corrup- 
tion propagated by Adam to all his posterity, and all re- 
stored to the same holy nature which he lost by his fall. 
But these men understand neither what is meant by 
original sin, nor original righteousness, nor the grace of 
baptism. 

Calvin seems to refer here to the Anabaptists. Bap- 
tism can perform of itself neither of these things. In 
Book II., Chap, i., Sec. 8, he had explained that original 
sin is the corruption of our nature by the fall, which first 
makes us liable to the wrath of God, and then perpetuates 
itself in the conduct of every human life. He identifies 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



the nature, and the acts which it produces, on the author- 
ity of Paul (Romans v. 12). A nature which produces 
only sinful acts is to be treated like a sinful person. This 
corrupt nature is not to be removed by baptism, but con- 
tinues to be the torment of every believer till death. 

So Calvin continues : "Two things must be distinctly 
observed, viz., that we are vitiated in all parts of our 
nature, and then, on account of this corruption, are justly 
held to be condemned before God, who can tolerate only 
purity, innocence and righteousness. And hence even 
infants are corrupt from their birth, for, although they 
do not yet show the fruits of unrighteousness, they have 
its seeds within them. Xay, their whole moral nature is. 
as it were, a seed-bed of sin, and, therefore, odious and 
abominable to God." 

In the remainder of this paragraph immediately fol- 
lowing the words of Calvin just set down as to infants, he 
signifies that such being the sinful nature in which we are 
all born, derived from our first father Adam, in whose 
disobedience, as represented by him, we do all partake, 
and such the penalty to which this sinful nature, and the 
sinful acts which continually flow from it, justly expose 
us, baptism comes to every believer with the assurance 
that of all these, our sins, original and actual, through 
faith in Christ, he has received full and entire remission. 
It also assures him that he has obtained righteousness, 
-such righteousness as the people of God can obtain in 
this life, viz., by imputation, only God, in his mercy, for 
Christ's righteousness' sake, regarding them as righteous 
and innocent. 

Thus this corruption of nature never ceases in us, but 
constantly produces new fruits, viz., the works of the 
flesh, just as a burning furnace perpetually sends forth 
flame and sparks, or a living fountain, waters : for concu- 
piscence never wholly dies in mankind until, freed by 
death from the body of death, they have altogether laid 
aside their own nature (Book III.. Chap. iii.. Sec. 
10-13). Baptism indeed tells us that our Pharaoh is 
drowned, and sin mortified ; not so, however, as no longer 
to give us trouble, but only so as not to have dominion: 
for, as long as we live, the remains of sin dwell in us. but 



CAI/VTO's INSTITUTES. 



305 



they shall neither rule nor reign. Meanwhile, let ns not 
cease to contend strenuously, and press on to complete 
victory. 

All this Paul expounds most clearly in Romans sixth 
and seventh chapters. Because justification is free and 
accompanied with regeneration, and because we have a 
pledge of this regeneration in baptism, believers must 
not let sin reign in their members. But, because of the 
infirmity in all believers, Paul adds, for their consolation, 
that they are not under the law, but under grace. Again, 
because there is danger that thev might grow presump- 
tuous, because they are not under the law, he explains 
what is the nature of that abrogation, and what is the use 
of the law. He tells us that we are freed from the rigor 
of the law, in order that we might adhere to Christ, and 
that the office of the law is to convince us of our depravity, 
and make us feel our impotence and wretchedness. 
Then, to show the extreme malignity of our sinful nature, 
he illustrates by its working even in a regenerate man, 
and that man is himself. He, therefore, describes his 
constant struggle with indwelling sin. Hence he is 
forced to groan and exclaim, "O wretched man that I am, 
who shall deliver me," etc. (Romans vii. 24). But lest 
the children of God should feel anxious about the result 
of this dreadful struggle, which they have to encounter, he 
therefore adds, for their comfort, there is "now no condem- 
nation to them which are in Christ Jesus' 7 (Rom. viii. 1). 

The second end of baptism is to serve for our confess- 
ing him before men. First, it is a mark by which we 
openly declare that we wish to be ranked among the peo- 
ple of God ; secondly, by it we concur with all Christians 
in the worship of one God, and in one religion ; in short, 
by it we publicly assert our faith, so that not only do our 
hearts breathe, but our tongues also, and all the members 
of our body, in every way they can, proclaim the praise of 
Gx)d. 

We come now to the second part of baptism, which may 
be included under four heads. First, as to the way in 
which we are to use and receive it. We are to receive it 
as from the hand of its author ; it is himself who speaks 
to us by means of the sign ; who washes and purifies us ; 



306 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



who effaces the remembrance of our faults ; who makes 
us partakers of his death, destroys the kingdom of Satan, 
weakens the power of concupiscence, nay, makes us one 
with himself, that being clothed with him, we may be 
accounted the children of God. These things we ought to 
feel as truly and certainly in our mind as we see our body 
washed with water. In the corporeal we ought to see the 
spiritual. By this badge the Lord is pleased to declare 
that he bestowed all these things upon us. Nor does he 
merely feed our eyes with bare show ; he effectually per- 
forms what he figures. 

What I have said is illustrated in the case of Cornelius. 
After first receiving the grace of the Spirit, he was bap- 
tized for the remission of sins, not seeking a fuller for- 
giveness from baptism, but a surer exercise of faith ; nay, 
an argument for assurance from a pledge. But why did 
Ananias say to Paul that he washed away his sins by 
baptism ? (Acts xxii. 16). All, then, that Ananias meant 
to say was, "Be baptized, Paul, that you may be assured 
that your sins are forgiven you; in baptism the Lord 
promises forgiveness of sins ; receive it and be secure. " 
I would not detract from the power of baptism, but would 
add to the sign the substance and the reality. From this 
sacrament, as from all others, nothing is to be gained, ex- 
cept as it is received by faith. 

The second head is as to the worthiness or unworthi- 
ness of the minister. The sacrament being from the hand 
of God himself, its dignity neither gains nor loses by the 
administrator, just as when a letter is properly signed and 
sealed, its value does not depend on the hand of the 
messenger. It was the error of the Donatists of old to 
measure the efficacy of the sacrament by the dignity of 
the minister. Such is the error of the Catabaptists in our 
day, who deny that we are properly baptized, because 
wicked men and idolaters in the papacy baptized us. We 
were initiated not into the name of any man, but into the- 
name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, 
and, therefore, our baptism was not of man, but of God. 
It did not harm the Jews that they were circumcised by 
impure and apostate priests. That did not nullify the- 
symbol so that it had to be repeated. 



calvin's institutes. 



307 



Calvin adds that, being baptized himself in the Romish 
church, he got the sign without faith, and so it was with 
him for some years, and that afterwards when he got the 
faith, he needed not the repetition of the sign. 

The third head is as to the corrupt and the genuine 
mode of baptism. iSTot satisfied with the ordinance ad- 
ministered according to the precept of Christ, the audac- 
ity of men has devised various corruptions to pollute the 
true consecration of water, e. g., the benediction, or rather 
the incantation ; then the taper, the chrism, the exorcism, 
the spittle, and other follies constituting an adventitious 
farrago. How much better, laying aside all these inven- 
tions of men, to bring forward the candidate, and present 
him to God, the whole church looking on as witnesses, 
and praying over him, with the recitation of the Confes- 
sion of Faith, in which the catechumen has been in- 
structed, and the explanation of the promises given in 
baptism, and then baptism in the name of the Father, and 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the whole concluding with 
prayer and thanksgiving. Whether the person baptized 
is to be wholly immersed, and that whether once or thrice, 
or whether he is only to be sprinkled with water, is not of 
the least consequence. Churches should be at liberty to 
adopt either, according to the diversity of climates, al- 
though it is evident that the term baptize means to im- 
merse, and that this was the form used by the primitive 
church. 

The fourth head is, who are to administer sacraments ? 
This is always a part of the ministerial office. Christ 
commanded only apostles, and those who should succeed 
them to baptize. The same is true of the Lord's supper. 
Baptism by laics, when a minister cannot be had, dates 
back to early times, but it cannot be defended. The 
Council of Carthage (A. D. 412) decreed that women 
might not baptize. As to children dying in infancy, 
whether baptized or unbaptized, their salvation is in- 
cluded in the promise to be a God to us and to our chil- 
dren. How much evil has been caused by the dogma, ill 
expounded, that baptism is necessary to salvation, few 
perceive, and therefore think caution the less necessary ; 
for, when the opinion prevails that all children are lost 



308 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



who happen not to be baptized, our condition becomes 
worse than that of God's ancient people, as if his grace 
were more restrained than under the law, since the prom- 
ise, which was then effectual in itself to confer salvation 
before the eighth day, would not now be effectual without 
the help of a sign. 

What the custom was before Augustine's day (A. D. 
354-430 J, we gather from Tertullian (A. D. 200), who 
says that a woman is not permitted to speak in the church, 
nor yet to teach, or baptize, or offer, that she may not 
claim to herself any office of the man, not to say of the 
priest. So Epiphanius (A. D. 375) upbraids Marcian 
with giving women permission to baptize, and says that 
not even the Holy Mother of Christ had this permission. 

The example of Zipporah (Exodus iv. 25) is irrele- 
vantly quoted. As we nowhere read that the command 
to circumcise was specially given to priests, but as to 
baptism the words are plain, being addressed to ministers, 
"Go ye, therefore, and baptize," it is then a sin for wo- 
man to baptize, because she puts asunder what God has 
joined together. But this I pass, only insisting that 
Zipporah was not actually performing any service to 
God, but, fretting and indignant, she was just upbraiding 
her husband, and giving offence to God, and her whole 
procedure was dictated by passion. 

But to make an end of this question, it is sufficient to 
say that children, who depart this life before baptism, are 
not thereby excluded from the kingdom of heaven. The 
covenant of God with parents is not in itself weak. Its 
power depends not upon baptism, nor any accessories. 
The sacrament is just a seal, added to God's promise, 
merely to confirm our faith in it. The children of be- 
lievers are not aliens to the church, nor are they baptized 
in order that they may thus become children of God, but 
they are received into the church because, by virtue of the 
promise, they previously belonged to the body of Christ. 
Hence, if in our having failed to make use of the sign, 
if there was neither sloth nor contempt nor negligence, 
we are safe from all danger. By far the better course, 
therefore, is to pay such respect to the ordinance of God 
as not to seek the sacraments in any other quarter than 



calvin's institutes. 



309 



where the Lord has deposited them. When we are not 
allowed to take them from the church, the grace of God 
is not so inseparably annexed to them that we cannot ob- 
tain it by faith, according to his word. 

The sixteenth chapter treats of Psedobaptism — its ac- 
cordance with the institution of Christ, and the nature of 
the sign. This chapter is divided thus : I. Confirmation 
of the orthodox doctrine of Psedobaptism (Sec. 1-9). 
The remainder of this chapter, being refutation of the 
arguments which the Anabaptists urge against Psedobap- 
tism, and special objections of Servetus refuted, will be 
passed over. 

In this age, frenzied spirits (the Anabaptists) have 
raised great disturbance in the church, and even now con- 
tinue to raise disturbance on account of Psedobaptism. 
The ground on which they make the assault is that Psedo- 
baptism is not of apostolic origin, but devised by human 
presumption afterwards. 

Isow, all Christian people must agree that the right 
consideration of signs does not lie merely in the outward 
ceremonies, but depends chiefly on the promise, and the 
spiritual mysteries to typify which the ceremonies them- 
selves are appointed. We must not stop short at the ele- 
ment and corporeal object, but look to the divine promises 
which are therein offered to us, and rise to the internal 
secrets therein represented. It remains, therefore, to in- 
quire into the nature and efficacy of baptism. Scripture 
shows that it points, first, to that cleansing from sin 
which we obtain by the blood of Christ, and, secondly, to 
participation in his death and rising, so that the flesh is 
mortified, and nature regenerated, and believers have fel- 
lowship with Christ. To these general heads may be 
referred all that the Scriptures teach about baptism, but 
it must be added that pabtism is a testifying of our 
religion before men. 

]STow, in respect to the two signs of circumcision and 
baptism given to the people of God, let us see in what they 
resemble each other, and in what they differ. When God 
gave circumcision to Abraham, he set himself before him 
as a God unto him and to his seed, adding that in himself 
was the perfect sufficiency for all things, and that Abra- 



310 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



ham might reckon on his hand as a fountain of every 
blessing. Eternal life was included in this promise, for 
so Christ explains it to the Jews in ^Matthew xxii. 32, 
and Paul also in Ephesians ii. 12, when showing to the 
Ephesians how great the deliverance God had given them 
from their original heathen state. He says to them that 
then they were aliens from the covenant of promise, with- 
out God and without hope, because without the sign in 
their previous state of uncircumcision. Xow. the first 
access to God, the first entrance to immortal life, is the 
remission of sins. Hence we see that circumcision cor- 
responds to the promise of our cleansing in baptism. 
Again God covenants with Abraham that he is to walk 
before him and be perfect, where we plainly see mortifi- 
cation and regeneration, even as Moses afterwards calls 
on Israel to circumcise the foreskin of their hearts ; and 
thus is explained what is signified by that carnal circum- 
cision. TTe have, therefore, a spiritual promise given to 
the fathers in circumcision, similar to that which is given 
to us in baptism, since it figured to them, both the for- 
giveness of sins and the mortification of tJie flesh. Be- 
sides, as we have shown that Christ, in whom both of these 
reside, is the foundation of baptism, so must he also be 
the foundation of circumcision. 

Calvin s Doctrine of the Lord's Supper. 

I propose to state definitely the exact doctrine of Calvin 
on the Lord's supper. He begins by referring to our 
Lord's saying, in John vi. 51, "I am the living bread." 
Of the invisible food we get from the body and blood of 
Christ, the bread and wine are signs. The secret union 
with Christ of the believer being an incomprehensible 
mystery, the signs chosen to set it forth are simple and 
familiar, because such are adapted to our capacity. The 
object of this sacrament, then, is to assure us of the sacri- 
fice of Christ's body and blood to be our spiritual food, 
and God renews the promise every time the cup is offered 
to us. 

The force of the sacrament is in the words. "Take, eat, 
this is my body and blood broken and shed for you." We 
are to take, because it is ours ; to eat. for it is one sub- 



CALVIN S INSTITUTES. 



311 



stance with us; and it was not for himself, but for us, 
he took flesh, and then sacrificed it. 

The sacrament, then, is not a mere sign of these things, 
but a seal to confirm the promise in John vi. Christ took 
not the appellation "Bread of Life" from the sacrament ; 
but, as such, he was given to us from eternity by the 
Father ; and, as such, he took our nature, and makes us 
partake of his ; as such, he bore our curse, was made our 
sacrifice, and raised our corruptible flesh to glory and in- 
corruption. In other words, John vi. preceded, not fol- 
lowed, the sacrament which sealed and confirmed the 
promise it sets forth. 

All these benefits we get by the gospel, and still more 
clearly by the sacrament, which assures us of what Christ 
said, "The bread which I will give is my flesh, for the 
life of the world." 

Here, say some, the eating is just believing. It is in- 
deed by faith, but faith is not the whole of it. It is 
rather a consequence of faith. Just as "the dwelling of 
Christ in our heart by faith" is not simple believing, but 
a consequence of it. Augustine, indeed, well says that 
we eat by believing, but all he meant was that the eating 
is not by the mouth, but of faith. Only Christ, it should 
be added, is not far off ; but we are united to him as mem- 
bers to the head. 

Others say we do have some kind of communion with 
Christ, but it is spiritual, and ,not of his flesh and blood ; 
whereas he says, "My flesh is meat indeed," and that 
we have no life unless we eat that flesh and drink that 
blood. 

Here now is a mystery, spoken by Christ, to be felt, 
rather than understood, of which Calvin says that he 
always feels that he falls below the dignity of it whenever 
he does his utmost to set it forth. He can only break 
forth in admiration of what the mind cannot comprehend 
nor the tongue express. What, then, exactly is this sub- 
lime mystery of which he proceeds now to give a brief 
summary ? 

First, says he, the sacred Scriptures teach that Christ 
is the eternal fountain of life. "He was the Word, and 
in him was life." Next, this life was manifested in hu- 



312 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



man form, for, as man had lost life by the fall, there re- 
mained no hope of life for him, except as he might be 
restored to it through commnnion with the Word. It 
could avail ns nothing for life to be in the distant Word, 
but if he comes nigh, and takes our flesh, and makes it 
vivifying for us — that is, joins himself to our flesh and 
joins us to him by his Spirit — we may then hope. "I am 
the living bread which came down from heaven, and the 
bread I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." 
Life now is in our flesh, and we can reach it by the easiest 
access, by just throwing open our hearts and embracing 
it by faith ; that is, by faith we can become one with him, 
both in flesh and spirit, and enjoy all he is and all he has. 
"Now this flesh of Christ naturally was mortal, just like 
ours, and not life-giving, but he pervades it with life in 
order to transmit it to us. So he declares, "As the Father 
hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have 
life in himself " — meaning, of course, to the Son as he 
has become flesh. Thus the flesh of Christ is become a 
reservoir of the water of life, constantly drawn from by 
believers through faith, and constantly replenished from 
the spring-head of his Godhead. It is for this reason we 
must be in communion with his flesh, and be members of 
his body, of his flesh and of his bones. "This," says Paul, 
"is a great mystery.' 7 He feels unable to utter it, and so 
expresses his amazement without explaining it to us. 

Calvin's idea evidently is that we, lost and dead sin- 
ners, could never reach the infinite source of life, nor he 
us, except in this one way of his coming nigh to us in 
flesh, and making himself one with us, so as afterwards, 
in the same way, to make us one with him, that is, par- 
taking of our nature, that he might make us to partake of 
his. We must, therefore, have communion of his life, 
which is lodged for us in the reservoir of his flesh. Life 
comes not to us from God, but from God-man. The Son 
of God is the eternal source of life. But the difficulty is 
for that life to reach fallen man. There is a legal diffi- 
culty which justification removes. But does there not 
remain a difficulty as to the vital connection ? Must there 
not be some natural tie of life betwixt the Redeemer and 
his people ? Such there clearly was betwixt the first 



CALVIN S INSTITUTES. 



313 



Adam and his members. He was their head, and they 
got their life through and from him. This was no 
figurative or imaginary tie, but a real, vital one, neces- 
sary to his being their representative. And must there 
not be a vital union also between the second Adam and his 
people ? ~Now, the way in which this comes about is that 
he takes our nature on him, and then gives us his nature, 
and so we become indeed one. He takes our flesh, and 
gives us his Spirit, and so establishes a real communion of 
life with us through his flesh and blood by the Holy 
Ghost. 

Thus, he says, Christ's flesh and blood feed our souls, 
as bread and wine our bodies, and these signs would have 
no aptitude as feeding our bodies if our souls were not fed 
by communion with the life which is in his flesh. And he 
calls on us now to let our faith conceive what our minds 
cannot understand, viz., that the Spirit can truly unite 
things separate in space. By a sacred communion of his 
flesh and blood, Christ transfuses life into us by faith ; 
and this he testifies to us, and confirms to us in the supper 
through the efficacy of the Spirit, so that it is no empty 
sign. Only believers, therefore, get what is set forth in 
these signs. 

It will not do to say that the language of Paul, "The 
cup of blessing, is it not the communion of the blood, and 
the bread, is it not the communion of the body of Christ V 
is only figurative. It is indeed figurative, but there is 
a reality figured in this language. God does not deceive 
by holding forth an empty symbol. The Lord puts the 
symbol into your hand to assure you that you truly par- 
take of him. 

Passing from this discussion with the undervaluers of 
the sacrament, to show the absurdity of the doctrine of 
transubstantiation, and that also of consubstantiation,. 
(where he never minces words with the Lutherans), we 
find him setting forth what kind of presence of Christ 
there is in the supper, viz., such as neither affixes him to 
the element of bread, nor encloses him in bread, nor cir- 
cumscribes him in any way, nor divests him of his just 
dimensions, nor dissevers him by differences of place, nor 
assigns him a body of boundless dimensions, diffused. 



3U 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



through heaven and earth. There must be nothing derog- 
atory to his heavenly glory, nothing inconsistent with his 
true and real and proper human nature. In other words, 
it is not any physical presence of his body at all, but only 
his spiritual presence by faith. And then we come to his 
grand reiteration of his inability to comprehend the great 
mystery which Paul had not undertaken to explain. "I 
will not be ashamed," says the great, because humble, 
Genevese, "that it is too high a mystery either for my 
mind to comprehend, or my words to express; and, to 
speak more plainly, I rather feel than understand it. 
The truth of God, therefore, in which I can safely rest, I 
here embrace without controversy. He declares that 
his flesh is the meat, his blood the drink, of my soul ; I 
give my soul to him to be fed with such food. In his 
sacred supper he bids me take, eat and drink his body 
and blood, under the symbols of bread and wine. I have 
no doubt that he will truly give and I receive." Let tran- 
substantiators and consubstantiators, and all others who 
exaggerate the sacraments on the one side, and let Socin- 
ians and Rationalists, and all other depredators of them 
on the other, say what they will, we admire more than we 
can express the consummate skill and masterly power 
with which, with the Word for his rule and the Spirit 
his guide, Calvin steered betwixt Scylla and Charybdis, 
and framed for us a statement of revealed truth on this 
difficult subject, which makes it not level to our compre- 
hension, of course, but vet not confused or self-contra- 
dictory. 

Xow. Dr. Cunningham says that Calvin makes an effort 
in all this "to bring out something like a real influence 
exerted by Christ's human nature upon the souls of be- 
lievers in connection with the dispensation of the Lord's 
supper, an effort which was, of course, unsuccessful, and 
resulted only in what was about as imintelligible as Lu- 
ther's consubstantiation. This is. perhaps, the greatest 
blot in the history of Calvin's labors as a public instruc- 
tor ; and it is a curious circumstance that the influence 
which seems to have been chiefly efficacious in leading him 
astray in the matter, was a quality for which he usually 
gets no credit, viz., an earnest desire to preserve unity and 



calvin's institutes. 



315 



harmony among the different sections of the Christian 
church" (Theol. Reformation, p. 240). 

rTow I have great respect for "William Cunningham, 
but more for John Calvin. I hardly know any modern 
writer whom I esteem more highly than Cunningham, 
and this is perhaps the only blot I ever discovered upon 
any of his writings. 

There are three points made against Calvin in this 
statement by Cunningham. One is that he errs in his 
doctrine of the sacrament; another, that his doctrine is 
as unintelligible as Luther's ; and a third, that he was led 
into the error by a weak desire for peace and harmony. 
Let us glance at these in the reverse order. 

First. As to the allegation that Calvin was misled into 
the error charged by overwhelming anxiety to please the 
Lutherans, the chapter we have just been considering 
bears us out in a denial of the correctness of the state- 
ment.* Calvin did, as we all know, earnestly desire to 
prevent the Lutherans and the Zwinglians from separat- 
ing ; but it is, we are persuaded, a gratuitous allegation 
that this desire led him to turn and twist his doctrine into 
such a shape as would please either party. This same 
statement, in a milder form, Dr. Hodge makes, saying, in 
effect, that one great object of his life was to effect a com- 
promise between these parties {Bib. Rep., 1848, p. 229). 
I have never fully examined what evidence there may be 
for this charge, but I am well satisfied, from my ac- 
quaintance with his writings, that it would not be diffi- 
cult to defend Calvin's complete integrity in the premises, 
and to show that he holds strictly and tenaciously to a 
doctrine which he considers to be written down in the 
word. 

rText. As to the unintelligibleness of the doctrine, I 
have yet to learn that that quality is any absolute proof 
that a doctrine is not true. If consubstantiation, or if 
transubstantiation itself were but revealed in God's word, 
we could not object to their being mysterious. Does Dr. 
Cunningham mean to say that he finds the Trinity, or the 

* See the strong, and even offensive, terms in which he speaks of 
consubstantiation in Book IV., cxvii., §§ 16-19; and also see the 
language he uses in his controversies with Westphal and Heshusius. 



316 



MY LIFE A3TD TIMES. 



humiliation of the second Person, or the omnipresence of 
God. or the connection of sovereignty and free agency, all 
very easy to be understood i For one, I see no self-contra- 
dictoriness in Calvin's doctrine, and am not stumbled at 
its mystery. We find mystery above and beneath and 
around and within us, and if we were to abandon all the 
mysterious doctrines which are unintelligible to our weak 
comprehension, we should just abandon our whole faith. 
The whole of Christianity moves in the sphere of the 
supernatural. 

Thirdly. As to the falseness of this doctrine, which is 
"the only blot on Calvin's teaching." if Cunningham, 
with his patience, and his learning, and his candor, and 
fairness, had gone into a statement of the grounds of this 
judgment which he pronounced, there would have been 
more satisfaction afforded us, and possibly we might have 
been convinced by the great Scotch divine. But as he only 
affirms, and that very briefly, of course. I need waste no 
time injexamining the point. 

Touching the difficulty which there is in comprehend- 
ing Calvin's doctrine of the Lord's supper, let it be re- 
membered that the subject itself is mysterious. Hear Dr. 
Charles Hodge on this point. "The Lord's supper is 
by all Christians regarded as exhibiting, and. in the case 
of believers, confirming, their union with the Lord Jesus 
Christ. Whatever obscurity rests on that union must, in 
a measure, rest on this sacrament. That union, however, 
is declared to be *a great mystery.' It has always, on that 
account, been called 'the mystical union.* We are. there- 
fore, demanding too much when we require all obscurity 
to be banished from this subject. If the union between 
Christ and his people were merely moral, arising from 
agreement and sympathy, there would be no mystery 
about it. and the Lord's supper, as the symbol of that 
union, would be a perfectly intelligible ordinance. But 
the sacred Scriptures teach us that our union with Christ 
is far more than this. It is a vital union — we are par- 
takers of his life, for it is not we that live, but Christ that 
liveth in us." * 



* Biblical Repertory, 1843. 



calvin's institutes. 317 

Thus Dr. Hodge, and I may put now what Dr. Cun- 
ningham said unwisely, by way of objection to Calvin's 
doctrine, about its being unintelligible, with these wise 
and scriptural words of Dr. Hodge, concerning the im- 
possibility of its being an intelligible ordinance, as sym- 
bolizing a union, which, confessedly, is not intelligible to 
any mortal mind. 

Let me add that Dr. Hodge thus states the points re- 
lating to this union of Christ and believers, about which 
there is a general agreement amongst Christians : 1, A 
federal relation by divine constitution. 2, On Christ's 
part, a sharing of our nature. 3, A participation by us 
of the Spirit of Christ, and his indwelling within us. 4, 
This union relates to body as well as soul ; our bodies are 
temples of the Spirit, and even in the grave they are still 
united by the Spirit unto Christ. All these features of 
the union are certainly not a little unintelligible, and yet, 
being revealed, "almost all Christians," says Dr. Hodge, 
"believe them." He adds, "This union was always repre- 
sented as a real union, not merely imaginary, nor simply 
moral, nor arising from the mere reception of the benefits 
which Christ has procured." Dr. Hodge might have still 
further added that this union is no mere figure of speech, 
for, of course, he means so. And to make his statement 
fully and thoroughly Calvinistic, he should have added a 
fifth particular of the Christian faith, viz., that we all 
partake of his flesh and blood Jn the sacrament. 

Dr. Hodge proceeds, in the article whence I have drawn 
these statements, to examine : 

1. Those authorities which express the Swiss views. 

2. Those which present the views of Calvin. 

3. Those symbols in which both sides concurred. And 
then in conclusion, 

4. He proposes to analyze and state their meaning. Let 
us accompany him in this investigation. 

1. The Swiss Confessions, referred to by Dr. Hodge, 
are the Confessio Tetrapolitana, the first Basel and the 
first Helvetic. The last named protests against the rep- 
resentation that the Eeformed look upon sacraments as 
mere badges of profession, asserting that they are also 
signs and means of grace. It calls the supper "coena mys- 



318 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



tica, in Avhich Christ truly offers his body and blood, and 
hence himself, to his .people," but says, "The body and 
blood are not naturally united with the bread and wine, or 
locally included in them or sensibly there present." In 
"The Sincere Confession of the Ministers of the Church 
of Zurich," the supper is said to be for "remembrance of 
the body and blood, devoted and shed for remission of our 
sins." This is "by faith," which renders them "present, 
in one sense, to the soul of the believer." "To believe is 
to eat, and to eat is to believe." "There is no other life- 
giving food in the supper than believers get elsewhere." 
"Christ's flesh has done its work on earth, no longer bene- 
fits on earth, and is no longer here." Observe now that 
every one of these statements Calvin accepts readily, and 
that they differ not at all from what he employs. Zwingle 
himself is quoted as saying that the natural substantial 
body of Christ is in heaven, and is not eaten "corporeally 
in the supper, but spiritually only," and this is "to rely 
on the goodness and mercy of God through Christ." Dr. 
Hodge distinguishes, in a note, betwixt the doctrine ac- 
tually held by Zwingle and the name Zwinglian, which is 
popularly applied to the Socinian doctrine of the sacra- 
ments being mere signs. 

2. Let us pass to the views of Calvin, and of the Confes- 
sions formed under his influence. In stating Calvin's 
view of this matter, Dr. Hodge naturally goes to the In- 
stitutes, Book IV., Chap. xvii. ; but he quotes from sec- 
tion 10, instead of from sections 8 and 9. The conse- 
quence is not a full and clear statement, but an imperfect, 
partial, and unsatisfactory one. The reader will remem- 
ber that Calvin says Christ is the eternal source of life, 
was manifested in our nature to restore it to us when lost, 
and to bring it nigh when afar off ; that his flesh, natur- 
ally mortal like ours, was pervaded with life, in order to 
transmit life to us, and is a reservoir constantly drawn 
from by all believers, but replenished continually from 
the eternal spring-head of his divinity ; that we must be 
in communion with this flow of life coming down from 
the very throne of God itself, or else have no life in us ; 
that we must be members of his body, and of one spirit 
with him, or be dead. JSTow, this union, Paul says, is a 



CALVIXS INSTITUTES 



319 



great mystery, and the great Genevese humbly professes 
that he feels, hut does not understand it. There is cer- 
tainly, however, no great difficulty in apprehending his 
statement of the mysterious doctrine. Surely, the prince 
of the reformers does not talk any unmeaning jargon. His 
views, derived directly from scripture, he puts into plain 
and simple words. It is possible, however, of course, to 
misapprehend and to misrepresent him, and this can 
hardly be avoided, if one gives only a partial statement 
of his doctrine. What I have to say, therefore, touching 
Dr. Hodge's account of Calvin's views is (Hibernice) 
that it could not possibly be clear or complete, seeing that 
it is so very incomplete. Undertaking to set forth the 
view Calvin gives of this mystery. Dr. Hodge unfortu- 
nately begins near the close of Calvin's brief summary, 
and the result, of course, is that we have no intelligible 
account of his doctrine. 

The Confessions, formed under Calvin's influence, 
which Dr. Hodge refers to, and from which he makes 
quotations setting forth the same views which he held, 
are : 

(1) The Gallican, adopted by Protestants of France in 
1559 ; (2) the Scotch, adopted in 1560; and (3) the Bel- 
gic (or Dutch), adopted in 1561. The testimonies of 
these Confessions are all as direct and strong as possible 
in favor of the doctrine of Calvin. And they constitute 
the most important symbols of the Reformed religion, 
representing the doctrines held by the French, the Scotch, 
and the Dutch churches. There were no more important 
sections of the Reformed than these three. 

It may be worth while to refer, just here, to testimony 
from another most important quarter, though dating 
nearly one century later. I refer to the Westminster 
Confession, which is acknowledged at this day by untold 
numbers of the descendants and followers of the Re- 
formed. Its language is, ""Worthy receivers, outAvardly 
partaking of the visible elements in this sacrament, do 
then a] so inwardly, by faith, really and indeed, yet not 
carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive and feed 
upon Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death; 
the body and blood of Christ being not corporally or car- 



320 MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 

nally in, with, or under the bread and wine, yet as really, 
but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that 
ordinance as the elements themselves are to their outward 
senses.'"' 

3. TTe come to those Confessions in which Zwinglians 
and Calvinists agreed. 

The first one referred to by Dr. Hodge is the Consensus 
Tigurinus. or the Agreement of Zurich. It was published 
with the title "Consent of ^Ministers of Zurich and of 
John Calvin. Minister of Geneva.'' Dr. Hodge says very 
truly that "in these articles there is not a word which any 
of the evangelical churches of the present day would de- 
sire to alter" (page 238). But he also alleges that Cal- 
vin's view is excluded from it (page 251). This is a 
remarkable statement. Let us recur to the history of this 
document. Let it be observed, first and foremost, that 
there were no very great differences betwixt the Swiss 
churches of Geneva and Zurich, touching the sacraments. 
There were at this period ( twenty years or so after Zwin- 
gle's death) some differences — the remains of the wide 
separation betwixt Zwingle and Luther. It was easy to 
exaggerate these, and most desirable that they should be 
composed. In 1549, therefore. Calvin, accompanied by 
Beza. goes to Zurich to confer with Bullinger. He had 
previously written these articles with his own pen. Bul- 
linger and the others accept them. Beveridge, the com- 
petent translator of so many of Calvin's works, describes 
the conference between these brethren as one where per- 
sonal intercourse drew their hearts together, and thev 
found themselves far better agreed than was supposed 
before, but he observes, "If any who subscribed the agree- 
ment must be understood by so doing to have changed 
the views they had previously entertained, he (Calvin) 
was not of the number, as there is not one of the articles 
which he had not maintained in one or other of his 
works/' 7 He adds that the effect of it was to convince 
many Lutherans how unjust it was to say that the Zwin- 
glians held to no sort of real presence at all, and it was 
confidently expected that out of it would flow the realiza- 
tion of Calvin's constant hope — a great Protestant league 
on the basis of that agreement. In view of these facts, 



calvin's institutes. 



321 



which cannot be denied, it is preposterous to say that 
Calvin had left his own view of the sacrament out of the 
Consensus. For, of course, if he thus yielded everything 
to the Zwinglians, what hope would have remained of his 
satisfying, by any such statement, the Lutheran expecta- 
tions ? It is manifest, of course, that, having Lutherans, 
as well as Zwinglians to convince, he could not have 
failed to insert something considerable touching the pres- 
ence of the body and blood in the sacrament. But I have 
further proof of this to offer. In the midst of all the 
bright hopes that a great Protestant union was about to 
take place, Joachim Westphal, minister of the Lutherans 
at Hamburg, a man unequal to the discussion of such a 
question, but scurrilous and virulent, attacks the Con- 
sensus, and, amongst other points, makes this very one 
that Calvin had abandoned his own opinions. For rea- 
sons which I have not time to detail, Calvin thought best 
to stoop so far as to reply to this man, and publishes his 
"exposition" of the agreement. And here he shows, in 
forcible terms, how and where the Consensus did set forth 
clearly, though mildly, his peculiar views. 

Second in the class of Confessions accepted by both 
Zwinglians and Calvinists, Dr. Hodge has put the Heidel- 
berg Catechism. He might, with just as good reason pre- 
cisely, have put the Gallic, Scotch, and Belgic Confes- 
sions, which he calls strictly Calvinistic, for they are no 
stronger than it is in declaring Calvin's view. The 
truth is, as is evidenced in the Consensus Tigurinus, that 
there was a substantial harmony between Calvin and the 
Swiss, notwithstanding their differences. Calvin would 
have had little trouble, if what he aimed at had been to 
unite with himself merely the Zurich brethren. But his 
great idea was a grand union of all the Protestants, and 
the difficulty was to bring the extremes to meet. He stood 
in the true scripture middle with his doctrine of the real, 
spiritual communion, while Luther had gone to one ex- 
treme and Zwingle to the other. But Zwingle is dead. 
Most of the Swiss (see Henry, II., p. 76) have already 
adopted Calvin's higher views, if, indeed, Zwingle did not 
himself forsake his own lower ones. Out of regard to 
Zwingle, however, they do not openly confess the change 



322 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



as yet. There is no proof, however, that Bullinger was 
what Dr. Hodge represents (page 242), "the great oppo- 
nent of what was considered peculiar in Calvin's views." 

KoWj the history of the Heidelberg Catechism may be 
given thus : Frederick III., the elector of the Palatinate, 
after a very violent disturbance in his kingdom, created 
by one Tilemann Heshuss, a Lutheran, whom Calvin had 
severely castigated, had this catechism drawn np by Cas- 
per Olevian, a disciple of Calvin, and Ursinus, a friend of 
Melanchthon, the object being to state the moderate Cal- 
vinistic view of the real presence, as against the Lutheran 
extreme. There was no question raised in all the agita- 
tions and conflicts which gave rise to this venerable sym- 
bol, concerning the reality of Christ's presence in the 
supper, but only concerning the mode. Was it by the 
mouth that Christ was received in the supper, or was it by 
faith ? Heshuss is so violent that Frederick, who suc- 
ceeded to the electorate in the midst of his fierce denuncia- 
tions, not only dismisses him from office, but determines 
to establish a rule of faith on this question for his sub- 
jects. He consults Melanchthon, who condemns Heshuss. 
Luther being now dead and gone, and Frederick decides 
for the mild or Calvinistic view, and resolves to have the 
Palatinate become Reformed. 

In these circumstances, he causes the persons named 
above to draw up the celebrated formulary, which, being 
adopted by a synod at Heidelberg, in 1563, and pub- 
lished as a confessional standard, has been translated into 
all modern tongues, honored with countless commentaries, 
and exalted, by general consent, to the highest authority 
for the whole Reformed church (Nevins Myst. Pres.. 
page 83). 

!N"ow, this famous symbol is perfectly clear in ex- 
pressing the peculiar doctrine of Calvin. It says Christ 
"feeds and nourishes my soul to everlasting life with his 
crucified body and shed blood, as assuredly as I receive 
from the minister, and taste with my mouth, the bread 
and cup of the Lord as certain sigus of the body and blood 
of Christ." And it says, "To eat the crucified body and 
drink the shed blood of Christ is not only to embrace 
with a believing heart all the sufferings and death of 



calvin's institutes. 



323 



Christ, and thereby to obtain the pardon of sin and life 
eternal ; but also, besides that, to become more and more 
united to his sacred body by the Holy Ghost, who dwells 
both in Christ and in us, so that we, though Christ is in 
heaven and we on earth, are, notwithstanding, 'flesh of his 
flesh and bone of his bone,' and that we live and are gov- 
erned forever by one Spirit, as members of the same body 
are by one soul." Also that we are, through the Spirit, 
as "really partakers of his true body and blood/ 7 as we 
receive the signs by the mouth. Ursinus also wrote a 
commentary on this symbol, in which he expresses in the 
strongest terms Calvin's peculiar doctrine, which we again 
call peculiar, inasmuch as it separates him from the Luth- 
eran, and what is popularly called the Zwinglian doctrine. 

Now, this Heidelberg Catechism is the symbol of the 
German Reformed Church, and has received also the en- 
dorsement of the Reformed Dutch Church, being solemnly 
approved by the Synod of Dort, in 1618. It is just an- 
other Calvinistic symbol, though Dr. Hodge chooses to 
represent it as one of those where Zwinglians and Cal- 
vinists met. 

Third and last in this class comes the second Helvetic, 
drawn up by Bullinger after Calvin's death, in 1562, but 
not of public authority till 1566. The Elector, Frederick 
III., anxious to meet the extreme intolerance of the Luth- 
erans at this time against all the Reformed, but him and 
his subjects particularly, and desirous to make, at the 
imperial diet, which was at hand, as fair a showing as he 
could for the side he has espoused, writes to Bullinger for 
some such statement as might serve to repress the cavils of 
the Lutherans. Bullinger sent to him this formulary, 
which, to give it more authority, was subjected to the 
other Helvetic, or Swiss churches, and being generally 
approved, it comes to be known as the proper Swiss Con- 
fession. Now, as Bullinger wrote this symbol, Dr. Hodge 
says, of course, we must expect to find in it nothing but 
what the Zurich ministers could cordially adopt, seeing 
that Bullinger was Zwingle's successor at Zurich, and the 
"great opponent of Calvin's peculiar view!" (Pages 242 
and 250.) 

Referring, then, to the second Helvetic, we find it full 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



and clear in the statement of Calvin's peculiar doctrine, 
albeit written, as Dr. Hodge says, by the chief opponent 
of it ! It says, "Believers receive what is given by the 
minister of the Lord, and eat the Lord's bread and drink 
of the Lord's cup ; inwardly, however, in the meantime, 
by the work of Christ, through the Holy Spirit, they 
partake also of the Lord's flesh and blood, and are fed by 
these unto eternal life. For the flesh and blood of Christ 
are true meat and drink unto eternal life, and Christ 
himself, as delivered up for us and our salvation, is that 
which mainly makes the supper," etc. It proceeds to ex- 
plain what it calls spiritual manducation, which is not 
"of a merely imaginary, undefinable food, but the body 
of the Lord itself delivered up for us, which, however, is 
received bv believers, not corporallv, but spirituallv bv 
faith." 

I have gone far enough with Dr. Hodge, and the re- 
marks which he offers on all these various Confessions 
are, in my judgment, so confused and erroneous that I 
pass them over in silence, except to say, merely, that what- 
ever objections he makes to Calvin's doctrine, he never 
once signifies that it is not possible to be understood, or 
that he does not understand it. And thus I set him over 
against Dr. Cunningham on this point, and natter niyself 
that I can knock down the Scotch theologian with his 
American brother. I may also refer to Schleiermacher, 
confessedly a great master of ratiocination, as professing 
that he saw nothing absurd in the Calvinistic theory. I 
may refer to another great master of it — Dr. R. J. Breck- 
inridge — as testifying strongly (Subjective Theology, pp. 
606, 607) to the consistency and scripturalness of the 
same doctrine. I may also speak of the celebrated TTalter 
Marshall, one of the Puritan ministers ejected in 1662 
for non-conforming, whose treatise on "The Gospel Mys- 
tery of Sanctification" was so strongly recommended by 
the Erskines and by Adam Gib, and is so highly esteemed 
amongst Calvinists, as setting forth, in the fullest and 
strongest manner, this same doctrine of the Lord's supper. 

I can also give my personal testimony to Dr. Thorn- 
well's having averred that he agreed with Calvin's doc- 
trine of the Lord's supper. 



calvin's institutes. 



325 



So, too, one shall find, in various portions of John 
Owen's works, that prince of theologians, very clear and 
forcible statements of the doctrine taught by Calvin. ( See 
his Sacramental Discourses, 10, 23, 25.) 

And I can refer, on the other hand, to passages in the 
works of modern theologians, of more or less repute, for 
soundness in the faith, who have evidently fallen away 
very much from the Reformed doctrine of the Lord's sup- 
per — as Edwards, Ridgley, Hopkins, Bellamy, Dwight, 
Ashbel Green, Dick, and Barnes. The tendencies of the 
age, especially in ]N~ew England, are rationalistic, and 
even Presbyterians are often too much inclined to suffer 
a disparagement of the supernatural. 

Recurring, however, to the facts brought to view in this 
chapter, the reader perceives that, whereas Luther, on the 
one hand, and Zwingle on the other, were wide apart, and 
the former especially obstinate and virulent, as well as 
extreme, yet the successors of Zwingle were never far 
apart from Calvin ; and that, accordingly, the first Hel- 
vetic Confession itself (which Dr. Hodge counts as anti- 
Calvinist, that is, Zwinglian) uses language which contra- 
dicts his representation of it, while the Gallic, Scotch, 
and Belgic Confessions, the Consensus Tigurinus, the 
Heidelberg Catechism, and the second Helvetic Confes- 
sion — all of them — are decidedly Calvinistic in their ut- 
terances. And he will not forget that the great Genevese 
reformer (great because humble) only undertakes to set 
before us, what he does not claim to comprehend, the sub- 
lime mystery revealed in the word of God. It seems to 
follow that, in accepting his views, we are not only follow- 
ing in the footsteps of the flock, not only accepting the 
creed of the Reformed churches — which we believe to be 
right and true on so many other points where other 
churches wander — but we shall be accepting, also, the very 
word of God upon the ineffable mystery of the union of 
the Head and the members. Calvin insists on nothing 
whatever except the sublime truth of life for us in the 
incarnation. There is life, of course, in the God absolute ; 
it is infinite and superabounding and everlasting, but not 
for us. We are creatures, and cannot get access to it ; we 
are sinners, and it is impossible for us to receive it, if we 



326 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



could come near to it. And so that life of the absolute 
God is to us as though it were not ; nay, it is against our 
life, and dooms us to death forever. But the incarnation 
is a wondrous divine plan, which procures for us justifica- 
tion, and a share in the life of God's own Son. But the 
life which it procures is inseparable from itself. ISTot 
God's Son, as such, gives it to us, but God's Son as he is in 
human flesh. He is not only our representative Head, 
but we are likewise vitally one with him. He partakes of 
our flesh, and we partake of his Spirit. His humanity is 
the connecting link between his Godhead and our man- 
hood. The flesh of Christ is a reservoir, full of life, con- 
stantly drawn upon by all his people through the Holy 
Spirit, and by faith, which unites us to the Saviour ; and 
this reservoir is itself constantly replenished from the 
everlasting spring-head. 

Now, then, Calvin's doctrine of the Lord's supper sim- 
ply is, that it holds forth and seals to us this most blessed 
truth. Does the reader see any heresy here ? Does he see 
any absurdity ? Does he see anything he cannot or ought 
not to accept ? Our Reformed fathers in France, in Hol- 
land, in Scotland, in Switzerland, in Germany, accepted 
it. They were not tinctured in the slightest degree with 
the rationalism of this age, and they accepted it, as they 
perceived it in the word. The whole Reformation, except- 
ing only the Lutherans (and not excepting all of them 
either, for Melanchthon believed with Calvin) — the whole 
Reformation, excepting Luther and his especial followers, 
accepted the same doctrine with Calvin, and we may 
safely do the same. 



CHAPTER X. 



Reminiscences of the War Between the States. 

THE General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of 
the United States of America, which met at Roch- 
ester, Y., was no sooner dissolved than I accepted, 
with my wife, an invitation to revisit Dr. Robert J. Breck- 
inridge, at his country-seat of Breadalbane, some ten or a 
dozen miles from Lexington, Ky. The prospective seces- 
sion of South Carolina would, of course, come up in our 
conversations. "So South Carolina is going to secede," 
he said to me. I said, "It seems to be pretty well as- 
sured." He then said, "And what stand do you think 
Kentucky will take ?" My reply was, "I would rather 
hear your opinion." He answered, "She will stand by 
South Carolina." I laid my hand on his knee, and said, 
"I am thankful to hear you say that." But Kentucky did 
not assume that attitude, and when, subsequently, I re- 
minded him of what he had said, his reply was, "Oh ! I 
did not expect Kentucky would allow herself to be drag- 
ged at the tail of South Carolina." Either I had mis- 
understood what he said, or else he had changed his 
ground. I still possess a letter from him, which proved 
to be a literal prophecy in extenso of the results of the 
war. 

The election of a sectional president was what actually 
determined secession of the South. That converted many 
most earnest opponents. Other multitudes had not fa- 
vored it, but held their first allegiance due to the State, 
and not to the Union. In this way, South Carolina be- 
came practically a unit. Indeed, Woodrow Wilson, speak- 
ing of the whole South, says that she "had avowedly 
staked everything, even her allegiance to the Union, upon 
this election. She knew that the party, which was hotly 
intolerant of the whole body of Southern institutions and 
interests, had triumphed in the elections, and was about 
to take possession of the government, and that it was 



328 



}IY LIFE AXD TIMES 



morally impossible to preserve the Union any longer. 'If 
yon who represent the stronger portion,' Calhoun had 
said in 1850, in words which perfectly convey this feeling 
in their quiet cadences, 'cannot agree to settle the great 
questions at issue on the broad principle of justice and 
duty, say so ; and let the States we both represent agree 
to separate, and depart in peace.' " The South had long, 
but vainly, waited for the Xortk's acceptance of this 
celebrated and most just proposal. 

When news came that Lincoln was elected, therefore, 
the South Carolina Legislature called a State convention. 
This convention met in Charleston on the 20th of Decem- 
ber, and passed, unanimously, the ordinance of secession, 
and made provision for the government of the State as a 
separate sovereignty, and for such exigencies of defence 
as might arise in case of war. By the first of February. 
Georgia and four of the Gulf States — Florida. Alabama, 
Mississippi, and Louisiana — had followed South Caro- 
lina, and seceded from the Union : and Texas was on the 
point of joining them. 

Delegates, appointed by the several conventions in the 
seceding States, met in Montgomery, Ala., on the 4th of 
February. 1861. framed a provisional constitution and 
government for the "Confederate States of America," 
chose Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, provisional Presi- 
dent, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, provisional 
Vice-President. In March, a permanent constitution was 
adopted, to take effect the next year. 

While the South thus showed herself in earnest, the 
country at large seemed to be bewildered. The adminis- 
tration was paralyzed. The States of the yorth, as Wood- 
row Wilson well expresses it. "had not awakened to the 
national idea. The Federal authorities did nothing. Al- 
most everywhere, in the North and West, the people were 
strangely lethargic, singularly disposed to wait and see 
the trouble blow over." The masses had not been watch- 
ing the progress of public affairs, and when the great 
crisis came, it took them by surprise. Probably neither 
side expected an actual conflict of arms, and even in the 
South many did not look for a permanent dissolution of 
the Union. Some believed that if war came it would not 



REMINISCENCES OF THE WAR. 



329 



last three months. It was said that Colonel Chesnut, 
ex-member of Congress, held that it would all be arranged, 1 
and that he even offered to drink all the blood that was 
o^oing to be shed. 

Shortly after the eventful 20th of December, the people 
of Charleston awakened one morning to the startling news 
that Major Anderson, who commanded the United States 
garrison at Fort Moultrie, had transferred his company to 
the much stronger fortress of Sumter. There was great 
significance in the move, for, no doubt, orders had come 
to him to this effect from Washington. The United States 
flag floated for a long time peacefully there. But, to 
many an eye in the city, and to many a heart in the State, 
it seemed to say that South Carolina was not yet out of 
the Union. President Buchanan was known to be a weak 
man, but he had always seemed favorable to the South. 
He held, as did also his Attorney-General, that there was 
no constitutional means or warrant for coercing a State 
to do her duty under the law. When Southern members 
retired from his Cabinet, naturally they were replaced by 
men of the ISTorth. After some time Messrs. James L. 
Orr and Kobert W. Barnwell were sent on as commission- 
ers to treat with President Buchanan as to the transfer of 
the national property lying within the State, and espe- 
cially as to the cession to South Carolina of the forts 
within her harbor. They presented themselves before 
the President, and he professed to be willing to give them 
official recognition, and accordingly so promised. But 
this promise was not to be fulfilled. As often as the 
South Carolina commissioners ivaited on the President 
to have his promises fulfilled, he would put them off, on 
one pretext or another. Meanwhile, as was believed in 
South Carolina, the Federal government was gaining 
time for the sending of a fleet to Charleston. The 
South Carolina commissioners continued to call on the 
President and demand to be recognized, and whenever he 
would try to put them off, Mr. Barnwell would say, "But, 
Mr. President, you have promised." This he could not 
deny, but he dared not fulfil it. On one occasion, when 
this accustomed solitary reminder saluted the presiden- 
tial ear, the old man lost his patience, and burst forth,, 



330 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



"But, Mr. Barnwell, you don't give me time to say my 
prayers." Still the commissioners were kept waiting, 
and still they got no recognition. The new President was 
inaugurated ; and now Seward, who became Secretary of 
State, kept other commissioners, who had been appointed 
by the Confederate government, still waiting for his de- 
cision, unofficially holding out hopes of concession 
through Justice Campbell of the Supreme Court, who 
wished, if possible, to mediate in the interest of peace. 
On April 8th, while they waited, formal notice was sent 
from the Federal authorities, not through these commis- 
sioners, but directly to Governor Pickens, of South Caro- 
lina, that the Federal garrison in Fort Sumter would be 
succored and provisioned. The commissioners, as I re- 
member the facts, then, of course, returned unrecognized, 
and the Confederate government at Montgomery, in- 
formed of the coining of this fleet, ordered Beauregard to 
attack the fort without delay. 

The fleet made no attempt to enter the harbor and 
reach the fort. Such was not the purpose for which it 
was sent. The administration was not prepared to com- 
mence hostilities. The astute Secretary's plan simply 
^ was, by the appearance of this fleet outside the harbor, 
to provoke the South to strike the first blow by firing on 
the flag. 

The first gun was fired at Sumter from Fort Moultrie 
- on the 12th of April by Edmund Buffin, Esq., an eminent 
Virginia statesman. Hot shot from Fort Moultrie set on 
fire the internal wood-work of the fort. The United 
States flag was lowered. Seward had gained his object. 
He had fired the Northern heart. President Lincoln im- 
mediately called for seventy-five thousand volunteers. 
The war was begun. 

The Bombaedment of Charleston. 
It is not my purpose to attempt a history of the war. I 
am only to speak of events which passed more or less di- 
rectly under my personal observation. Charleston, which 
witnessed the actual beginning of the war, was never cap- 
tured. The city was long blockaded, and for two years 
or more was shelled from Morris Island and other points. 



REMINISCENCES OF THE WAR. 



331 



The Federal artillery reduced Tort Sumter to a heap of 
ruins, but ruined as it was, the Confederates, under the 
gallant Major Elliott, held it to the last. Working by 
day and by night, new fortifications were constructed out 
of the debris, and the ruined fort, wonderful to relate, was 
rendered impregnable. The garrison was, of course, re- 
cruited continually from the city. E"egro laborers were 
sent down, and calls were made also on the country dis- 
tricts for help at this fort, and to strengthen the other 
fortifications. 

I was required to furnish two hands to assist in this 
heavy work. I selected, from my slaves, Ben, surnamed 
Collins, an active and vigorous young negro, and put with 
him an elderly man, Daniel, who rejoiced in the surname 
of Castlebury. The former, with the enthusiasm of 
youth, was delighted with my selection, and rendered, I 
have no doubt, very excellent service. Their lot was to 
be sent to Fort Sumter. These men were both sent back 
to me after awhile, and they both had accounts to tell 
which greatly interested us all, white and black. Daniel, 
especially, told hoAv the large space surrounding the 
ruined walls, which was covered over with brick-bats, had 
strong spikes of iron driven down amongst them, to sus- 
tain wires stretched from one to the other, these being 
intended to trip up the enemy, should they land in the 
night time to scale the low walls. Parties, chiefly of 
negroes, were sent out from the fort to work amongst these 
wires. Sometimes the alarm would be given that the 
boats of the enemy were approaching, and these laborers 
would have to retreat within the walls, and old Dan would 
stumble over these wires in his flight. But the most as- 
tonishing thing to us all, which Daniel reported, was 
what he called the "sugary freeze." That puzzled us for 
awhile, but, when he explained that it had many long pro- 
jecting points, we were able to understand that he was 
describing the cheveaux de frise. 

But a second time I was called on for the same amount 
of help, and I thought best to send the same two, because 
the experience they had acquired might enable them best 
to take care of themselves. Ben Collins made no objec- 
tion, he rather liked the excitement, but Daniel wished for 



332 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



a substitute. He said lie was willing to go, however, if I 
would promise that he would not be sent to Fort Sumter. 
He never wanted to see that place again. I explained my 
lack of power, telling him that they might have to call on 
me to go there, and I must submit. So down they went, 
and, lo ! Daniel was appointed nowhere but to hated Fort 
Sumter, while Ben was sent to Fort Johnson. But when 
the sloop, which conveyed the relay of hands, arrived at 
Sumter, old Dan was nowhere to be found. Had he fallen 
overboard to become a prey to sharks, or had he run away 
before the sloop started ? There was a lot of scantling 
and boards in the hold of the vessel, and there Dan had 
secreted himself. But he passed unhurt through his sec- 
ond service in the dangerous fort, and reached home in 
safety, while Ben, poor fellow, happening one day to be 
on the parapet of Fort Johnson, was struck on the arm 
with the fragment of a shell, and amputation was made 
necessary. One-armed Ben, as they afterwards called 
him, when emancipation came, took himself to Columbia, 
and I found him there years afterwards, married and sup- 
porting himself and family by circulating through the 
city with a little hand-cart of vegetables, which he sold 
to families not convenient to the market-place. One sum- 
mer he paid me a visit at my home, and cheerfully said 
he could do as much work with his one arm, cutting wood 
or mauling rails, as any other man. 

Where the Ashley and the Cooper discharge their 
waters into the ocean, they had produced a formidable 
bar, now happily removed, which prevented the entrance 
of very large vessels, and the fleet made no attempt to 
enter the harbor, for its smaller vessels dared not en- 
counter the numerous torpedoes with which the channel 
was filled. The bombardment of the city was very much 
dreaded before it began, notwithstanding Beauregard's 
assurance that it never could produce much visible effect. 
But, naturally enough, the lower part of the city was, for 
the most part, forsaken by its inhabitants. St. Michael's 
steeple was a favorite target for the artillerist, the more 
because it was known that members of the signal corps 
occupied it night and day. My nephew, Augustine T. 
Smythe, was up there many a night, doing signal duty. 



REMINISCENCES OF THE WAR. 



333 



and shells sometimes passed near by, but I think the 
steeple was never struck. What Beauregard had told us 
came true ; the city was but little hurt by the bombard- 
ment, and but few persons were killed or wounded. When 
Sherman left Savannah on his way to Columbia, Charles- 
ton was, of course, evacuated. Since the two years' bom- 
bardment, she has had other visitations more grievous 
than this, among them cyclone and earthquake, but the 
historic city still survives and flourishes. 

Soon after the war began, Columbia Theological Sem- 
inary was necessarily closed, nearly or quite all the stu- 
dents having taken their departure to go to the army, and 
I moved my family to my home in Pendleton. 

When the bombardment began, I repaired to Charles- 
ton, packed up my brother James's large and valuable 
library, his house being in a very exposed situation, car- 
ried it to Columbia and placed it for safe-keeping in the 
basement of the central building of the Theological Sem- 
inary. The furniture of that dwelling house, and of my 
brother Robert's, had previously been conveyed to Colum- 
bia, and stored in a warehouse, belonging to my Aunt 
Nancy Law, of that city. 

When, owing to the unfortunate removal by President 
Davis of General Joe Johnston from the command of our 
Western army, it failed to overthrow and rout Sherman 
at Atlanta, as had been confidently expected, and when, 
accordingly, his unobstructed march through Georgia was 
bringing him down to Savannah, I went again to Colum- 
bia, and moved my own large and valuable library in 
boxes to my aunt's warehouse, and then carried the most 
of my furniture to the same place. A variety of other 
matters in my house at the old Bank, in Main street, 
which I thought would be convenient and needful for our 
use at Pendleton, I got ready to ship by railroad across 
Broad river. But a tremendous freshet occurred, and 
tore away some portions of the bridge. This detained me 
for some days in Columbia. 

In the meanwhile an incident occurred significant both 
of the extreme pressure of those times, as it affected all 
classes of our people, and also of the high-born dignity 
with which many Carolina families were able to meet it. 



334 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES 



One of our citizens, the head of an old Huguenot family, 
was president of a bank, which had been forced to remove 
its treasures and its business from Charleston to Colum- 
bia. He asked me to come around and spend the evening 
at his house. The war had consumed most of our luxuries 
of civilized life, amongst them coffee. Many were the 
substitutes for it we were forced to employ. A favorite 
one was the seed of the okra plant. Another was roasted 
cotton seed. Still another was sweet potatoes, cut up, 
dried, and then parched, and there were a variety of 
others, each one having its own particular admirers. At 
supper there sat two ladies, with my host and myself, and 
in the centre of the table appeared one solitary dish. Our 
conversation went briskly on. Without the slightest 
apology, or any reference whatever to the meagerness of 
the diet, I was courteously invited to partake. It proved 
to be brown bread, the brownest I had ever beheld in all 
my life : but. to all appearance, the whole company found 
it very good. Whilst enjoying this delicacy. I -vras asked if 
I would take cotton-seed coffee, to which I gave assent. It 
was my first introduction to that substitute, but I found 
it very refreshing, though, if I remember rightly, there 
was neither sugar nor cream. We united at the close of 
the repast in expressing thanks to the kind providence 
which had once more furnished us with food. 

Before I left home on this trip to Columbia, having a 
very valuable pair of carriage horses, and knowing how 
great would be the danger of their being taken from me, 
I had determined to sell them. At the opening of the 
war I had given three fine horses to fit up a cavalry 
company at Columbia, but this pair of horses were un- 
suited to cavalry use from their size and weight. Rufus 
Johnston, president of a bank in Columbia, had offered 
me $7,000 Confederate money for them, and I had a 
debt to pay. tor which I required the money. The horses 
had cost me $800, in good money. My carriage driver. 
Alfred, was a very competent young negro slave, of great 
intelligence. I had entire confidence in his faithfulness 
and honesty, as well as capacity. I wrote to Mr. Johnston 
to accept his offer, and dispatched Alfred, with the horses, 
to Columbia. There were great and various dangers on 



REMINISCENCES OF THE WAR. 



335 



his way, but lie piloted his charge safely through them all, 
delivered them to my correspondent, and returned safely 
home without delay. This will illustrate the relations 
subsisting between master and slave amongst us, and also 
that between valuable property and our currency at this 
period. 

Before leaving Columbia to return home, being aware 
of the treatment South Carolina and Columbia might ex- 
pect to receive from General Tecumseh Sherman, I ac- 
cepted an offer from a Jewish gentleman, of the name of 
Jacobs, of $30,000 for my dwelling house, from which I 
had just removed all the furniture. It was Confederate 
money. I took it right over to the proper office, and gave 
it for Confederate bonds. I cannot recall to mind, though 
I have often tried to do so, what disposition I then made 
of the bonds. They vanished alike from my possession 
and recollection. The house for which I got these bonds 
was built of brick, three stories high, four large rooms on 
a floor, standing on the main street, with a large lot of 
land in the rear, with all necessary outbuildings. It had 
been built for one of the city banks, and was long so em- 
ployed. When I became professor in the Theological 
Seminary in 1857, I purchased it for $7,000 cash. Here 
is an illustration of the value of real estate in a flourish- 
ing city, in the anticipation of a visit by a brutal general, 
at the head of an army thirsting for booty. We were well 
aware of what he had ailowejl to be done in his progress 
through Georgia, but we had also heard of the threats he 
had made against the people of South Carolina, and 
against their capital. 

I now forwarded to Alston, by railroad, the matters I 
had selected from my house to go to Pendleton. There I 
had to get a boat to carry them past the broken bridge over 
the river. Once on the other side, I was able to transport 
them by railroad to my home in Pendleton. 

Not long after this, Sherman reached the borders of 
South Carolina, and then it was that he began, especially, 
to teach the people, as he said, "what war means.' 7 They 
had desired war, and he would give it to them. His track 
was marked all along through this State by the standing 
chimneys of burnt dwelling houses. Such chimneys were 



336 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



the monuments he erected for himself in South Carolina. 
His war, as he went along, was against women and chil- 
dren. On the 17th of February his army reached Colum- 
bia. I leave it to others to describe, in general, the hor- 
rors that ensued. I shall speak only of what I learned 
from my aunt, Mrs. Law, and her sister, who was living 
with her. Like other ladies who needed protection, she 
had obtained a guard of two or three soldiers. They had 
appeared civil all the day, and treated her respectfully. 
But when night came, and the three rocket signals went 
up, the pandemonium, which broke loose, came to her 
house, and her guards then joined with their drunken 
fellows. They all went up stairs together, beginning, she 
said, at the third story, with their work of robbing and 
setting fire, and so coming down through the second to the 
lower story, and then they said to her, "Old woman, if you 
don't want to be burnt up, you had better get out of this 
house.'' She essayed to go, where her sister had preceded 
her, with her daughter and a young babe, to the house of 
Alexander Haskell, on the top of Arsenal Hill, which was 
not far from her own burning dwelling. But the streets 
were full of soldiers, many of them drunk, and the houses 
all on fire. She had been subject to vertigo, and was some 
three-score and ten years old. She told me that, as she 
staggered along by herself, she was afraid that she might 
fall beneath some of the spreading flames. But she 
reached the Haskell house in safety, and found it full of 
women and children. Her sister told me she saw the 
soldiers throwing balls of some material saturated with 
turpentine, and set on fire, into the warehouse or maga- 
zine, which had been filled full with what we had stored 
there. Where my aunt passed the next day and night she 
could not herself tell, and it was only on the second or 
the third day that some friends found her wandering 
through her old ruined garden, and she was, by them, re- 
moved to rooms in the Seminary building, which had been 
vacated. In the good providence of God, it was so ordered 
that, in poverty and suffering, she was to find a refuge in 
Law Hall, a three-story brick building, of many apart- 
ments, which had been erected on the Seminary grounds, 
with money generously given by herself, and it was there, 



REMINISCENCES OF THE WAS. 



337 



after a short time, her long and useful life came to an 
end. 

Fort Sumter surrendered to Beauregard on the 13th of 
April, IS 61. Our Theological Seminary at Colmnbia 
closed early in the next month. I ministered, during my 
summer vacation, to the little Mt. Zion congregation, wor- 
shipping about two miles from my house, in the old 
church building where I first met the South Carolina 
Presbytery, in IS 52. while looking for a home in the 
Piedmont country. One of my first official acts in that 
congregation was to bury, in their cemetery, two young- 
soldiers, members of that church. They belonged to the 
Fourth South Carolina Regiment, commanded, in the 
first Hannassas battle, by Colonel J. B. E. Sloan, of Pen- 
dleton. The regiment had their position in the thick of 
that fight, near to .Jackson's Virginians. It was to them 
General Bee, originally himself of Pendleton, and who 
also fell in the same battle, had addressed his famous ex- 
hortation, which gave a sobriquet to Jackson, "South 
Carolinians, be firm : don't you see how Jackson's men, 
right there, are standing like a stone wall ?" The South 
Carolina regiment stood firm. but. after the battle, these 
two Pendleton young men lost their lives. They were 

cousins, Michael Bellotte and Hillhouse. They were 

walking together over the bloody field, and, seeing a com- 
rade of theirs, named Lewis, examining a spent ball, 
which he had picked up. they, in their thoughtless curi- 
osity, went up to examine the same. TThen they were all 
satisfied, Lewis let the ball drop at their feet. It ex- 
ploded, and the two cousins were killed on the spot. 

The Pev. Dr. Thomas L. McBryde, pastor of the Pen- 
dleton Presbyterian Church, died on the 15th of April. 
IS 63. I had assisted him frequently before his death, 
and after it ministered to his people till the close of the 
war. I had many occasions for encouraging their hearts 
during its progress, and giving them consolation in the 
bereavements it occasioned. 

Pendleton and its neighborhood furnished a good many 
soldiers. Amongst those who never returned there were 
Captain Warren and ]\Iajor Wright, both of Camden, 
whose wives were the daughters of Mr. Robert Maxwell. 



338 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



There was Edward Maxwell, whose father I have named, 
who had just graduated at the South Carolina College. 
Ezekiel Pickens, who, though he never got to the war, 
died, on his way thither, at Richmond. There was also 
Major Kilpatrick, whose hody, with that of young 
Pickens, I committed to their tombs in the old historic 
Stone Church Cemetery. There were also Tally Simpson, 
Willie Seaborn, Julius Ross, Earl Lewis, Laurens and 
Ben Smith, two brothers, and, perhaps, others, who all 
fell in battle. Besides those who never returned, Pendle- 
ton and its neighborhood sent at least thirty others, some 
of whom returned quite unhurt, others had been wounded 
more or less severely, and yet others had suffered impris- 
onment for a longer or shorter period. 

But there was one man who went from Pendleton to the 
war and never returned whose case Avas specially pitiful. 
His name was John Hix. He was my overseer for some 
years, but when, in 1858, I sold Woodburn to my brother 
Ellison, and moved to Boscobel, this man continued to 
be the overseer for my brother. He had a wife and a 
number of children, besides Billy, a sister's son, whom he 
had adopted. He was a good man, a Baptist, and he 
sometimes preached in their Lebanon church. His family 
would be helpless without him, and he did not volunteer. 
As the war went on he was drafted, and he was very un- 
willing to go. He told me that he knew he would be 
killed in the very first battle. But he went in May, 1863, 
and his company passed through Charlotte, ^sT. C, whilst 
I was in attendance upon our General Assembly at that 
place. I was the guest of Judge Osborn, and poor John 
Hix called to see me. He told me he knew he was going 
to his death. Judge Osborn invited the soldier to remain, 
and take supper with us. After supper he went on his 
way with his comrades. A battle took place as soon as 
he got to the army. John Hix was in it, and a cruel can- 
non ball tore away his whole stomach, and the soldier fell 
dead. How dreadful is war ! We helped his family all 
we could, and I met Billy some years after the war, and 
he was doing well. But the family drifted out of our 
sight. 

I must also here add another affecting story, told me 



REMINISCENCES OF THE WAR. 



339 



by my friend, Pierson, one of the ministers of South Car- 
olina Presbytery, who became a chaplain in our army, 
when Johnston was retreating before Sherman. He 
found himself at some place below the city of Atlanta, 
where a train of cars was expected full of wounded sol- 
diers. With a number of others, bent on the like errand, 
he was ready, with a bucket of water and a cup to give it, 
filled with cold water, to these suffering men. He entered 
a box-car. Wounded soldiers were strung all around 
against its sides. He began to administer the cooling 
draught, when one of them said, "We want the water, but 
there is a boy there in the extreme corner, who, Ave think, 
is dying ; won't you go first and speak to him ?" Mr. 
Pierson says, "He was dreadfully wounded, and hardly 
conscious, for to my first questions he made no answer. 
Anxious to find out who the parents of this dying young 
soldier were, that I might write to them, I then asked 
him, 'What is your father's name V He answered, 'I am 
my father's precious jewel.' Then I asked, 'Who is your 
mother V He said, 'I am my mother's darling boy.' I 
said, 'Where does your father live V He began, 'Our Fa- 
ther, which art in heaven,' and slowly, but clearly, re- 
peating the whole of the Lord's Prayer to the end, and 
saying, 'Amen,' he breathed his last, and I saw he was 
gone." The chaplain told me he would give everything he 
had in the world to have known that boy's name, and 
where his home was. None of the soldiers were able to 
tell him. 

When President Davis and his Cabinet found it neces- 
sary to quit Richmond, their course carried them through 
the Piedmont portion of South Carolina, but they did 
not come by Pendleton. One night they lodged at Abbe- 
ville with my friend, Mr. Thomas C. Perrin, in that 
spacious and magnificent mansion which was shortly 
afterwards destroyed by fire. In the convention which 
passed the ordinance of secession, the delegates were 
called on to sign for their districts in alphabetical order, 
and so Mr. Perrin, representing Abbeville, signed first of 
all the secessionists, not only of South Carolina, but of 
the whole South. It is something of a coincidence that, 
as he told me himself, they held their last Cabinet meeting 



340 



MY LIFE AUD TIMES 



in his house, agreeing that they would disperse when they 
left Abbeville. Air. Benjamin. Secretary of State, who 
afterwards became a very eminent lawyer in London, said 
to Air. Perrin. after that last meeting broke up. "What 
is the best and safest disposition for me to make of the 
seal of the Confederacy V' Mr. Perrin replied. "You are 
going to cross the Savannah river to-morrow morning, and 
I would suggest that you consign it to the keeping of that 
river.'' Air. Perrin informed me of these facts hirnself. 
and supposed that the seal had been deposited in the mid- 
dle of that river. But I have heard of parties in this 
State or Georgia who claim to have possession of that 
seal. 

We did not hear, at Pendleton, of the removal of the 
Cabinet from Richmond, until, after a number of days, 
there came through our neighborhood a large number of 
Federal troops, said to be five thousand men. under one 
Colonel Brown. Then we heard that they were in pur- 
suit of President Davis. Xone of these soldiers passed 
through our village. A company of them came to its con- 
fines, and Air. .James Hunter, the intendant of our little 
town, walked out, having a sword by his side, and had a 
conference with their captain. What passed between 
them I never heard, but I believe they had got informa- 
tion that we had a body of troops in our village, and so 
turned off to the left, and moved towards Anderson 
Courthouse, whither the main body had gone. These said 
troops of ours were a small body of very old men. and 
some fifty lads, one of them my son John, about fifteen 
years old, armed with some small and very inferior shot- 
guns. They had been patrolling around Pendleton for 
sometime, searching for deserters, and known as "Home 
Guards." under the command of Captain Jones. How 
they happened to miss the Federals, when passing around 
Pendleton. I cannot tell, but a day or two after this, a 
portion of them had got wind of some soldiers being at 
Mr. Elias E aide's, on the Anderson road, four miles from 
the city. Duff Greene Calhoun, a young fellow of about 
eighteen, was leading these boys at the time, and, like 
boys, they took after the Yankees. Happily for these 
young patriots, the Yankees heard them coming, or. per- 



BEMIXISCEXCES OF THE WAR. 



341 



haps, saw them tearing down the big road a mile off, and, 
fearing to encounter these invincibles, they fled inconti- 
nently, and our chaps pursued them for a mile. 

After two or three days, there came to my brother 
Kobert's house, one mile from mine, a battalion of these 
soldiers, commanded by a major, seeking to find the 
treasure, which our President and Cabinet had left there. 
This story had, no doubt, been told them by some persons 
in Anderson, but there was no truth in it, as I have inti- 
mated already. But the major demanded the treasure, 
and threatened to hang my brother if it was not forth- 
coming. The officer even insisted upon telling him just 
where the money was hidden. There was a place, under 
the open basement of his house, always covered with 
planks, and some negroes in Anderson, who knew my 
brother's house, must have told the major that Jeff. Davis' 
gold was under those boards. My brother had the boards 
lifted, and a hole dug in the ground deep enough to 
satisfy the major that he had been misinformed, and was 
not to secure the coveted prize of the Confederacy's gold 
and silver. He did, however, find and take away with 
him a very magnificent military saddle, which was in 
one of the upper rooms of the house. This saddle had 
been sent from England, by Mr. Prioleau, for General 
Beauregard, and had been committed to my brother's care 
until he could find an opportunity to forward it to the 
General. 

While their commanding officer had been making this 
search, some of his men had made the ladies of the family 
give up their watches. The major, being informed of 
this, w T as considerate enough to have them restored ; but 
no sooner had he and his command moved off, than those 
men slipped back, and once more took possession of their 
booty. 

While this body of soldiers were at Eivoli, my ^ 
brother's place, seven or eight of them came over to Bos- 
cobel, where I lived. I was lame at the time, and obliged 
to use a crutch. When they came up, I was out at some 
distance from the house, but they saw me, and one came 
over to me. He said, "Are you the owner of this place ?" 
I said, "Yes, are you Yankees ?" He said, "Yes, we are. 



342 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



Where are your horses ?" I told him 1 had sent them 
away. "You sent them away, did you ?" said he. "Yes," 
said I, "I sent them away, that yon might not get hold 
of them." "Well," he said, "yon come up to the house, 
and we'll take care of you." We went up to the house 
together, where there were two or three more men, and 
my escort said to them, "He has sent away his horses, so 
that we might not find them." Just as he was speaking, 
I saw that some of his comrades had gone into the house. 
So I immediately turned from the men who were talking 
to me and went in. One of the party, who had first gone 
into the house, demanded my watch. I gave it to him, but 
said, "Does your government send you all through this 
country just to rob private citizens ?" Said he, "Do you 
suppose I would go riding all about here and not take 
anything home to my family ?" I was quite tired with 
my little walk, so I said to him, "Sit down, I want to talk 
to you." "No," said he, "T haven't got time," and he 
started up stairs. The fact was, he did not enjoy my fin- 
gering his conscience. Several ladies of my family were 
near, and he said to them, "Don't be afraid, ladies, we've 
seen ladies before. We only want to get pistols and gold 
watches." But they took whatever jewelry and articles 
of value they found. I followed this man about as well as 
I could with my crutch, and pretty soon found myself 
walking with him through one side of my wide piazza, 
and down the back steps, where his horse was standing- 
hitched. The man started to mount. As he did so, my 
back was turned towards him, and I heard his gun go off. 
Startled at the sound, I turned to look, and saw the man 
I had been talking to falling head foremost from his sad- 
dle, with the blood pouring in a stream from a wound in 
his throat. The sound of his gun made several of the 
others rush to the scene, and two of them raised their 
guns, and were about to shoot. 

My daughter, Mrs. Mullally, was in the piazza, the only 
witness to what had happened. She cried out to them, 
"He shot himself." I had not had one particle of fear of 
them from the beginning, and I took command, calling 
out, "Don't you see this man is bleeding to death ? Come 
here, some of you, and lift him up." Three of them 



REMINISCENCES OF THE WAR. 



343 



obeyed. As soon as they raised him, it was plainly to be 
seen that, as he mounted his horse, his gun was discharged, 
the bullet entering his throat, and coming out at the top 
of his head. Instantly, they dropped his head, and all 
three began promptly to empty his numerous pockets, 
which were full of plunder. I was standing at his head, 
and they were busy at my feet. All kinds of things came 
out of those pockets. I clapped my hands over their 
heads, and said, "The hand of God is on you, men. Give 
me back my watch." They seemed to be impressed, and 
looked from one to the other to see who had taken the 
watch. It was quietly given back to me. My daughter 
cried out, "Father, they've got my watch, too !" I clapped 
my hands again over their heads, and said, "Give back 
that lady her watch." It, too, was surrendered, and they 
departed, taking with them their comrade's horse, and all 
his other belongings, but showing no feeling or concern 
for him. The man was still living, though unconscious. 
I told them, as they left, that I would bury him when 
dead, and this seemed to convert me into a friend. Then 
they paused and told me the dying man was from Hills- 
dale, Mich., that his name was Alanson Chapman, and 
that he had a brother out on the road with the rest of the 
battalion, who could now be seen not very far off. As my 
visitors were riding off through the gate, two young colts 
in the yard seemed disposed to follow their horses. I 
called after the men, telling them not to let those colts out, 
though I thought it more than likely they would shoot the 
colts and ride off. But they quietly drove them back, and 
also shut the gate. 

Two or three weeks after this, the alarm was given at 
my house that four Yankees were coming up the avenue. 
I left the breakfast table and went out to meet them. 
Two I recognized as of the previous party. One of the 
other two had dismounted, and was standing on the 
ground. Addressing him, I asked, "What do you want ?" 
He said, "We have come to see about that man who was 
hurt ! What did you do with him ?" A look into his eyes 
showed me that he was the brother of the dead man. I 
said to him, "Your brother died that night; would you 
like to see his grave ?" At that moment a servant came 



344 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



up with my buggy and a horse I had borrowed from my 
brother, mine having been found in their hiding place in 
the woods, and carried off by some of their company. I 
got into the buggy, and we all rode down to a beautiful 
little pine thicket, which was used as a burial place by 
the negroes of my plantation. 

I must say, first, that when the raider died, my old 
negro man Charles, the manager of my affairs, seemed 
to foresee, as I did not, that we should have this second 
visit. I had told him to prepare a decent coffin and grave, 
and to gather all the people together in the afternoon, that 
I might go with them down to the grave for religious ser- 
vices — all of which we did. But the old man had also 
made a nice pine head-board and foot-mark; brought 
them to me, and asked me to put the dead man's name on 
the head-board. I made objections, but he prevailed, and 
I carved and inked — 

ALANSON CHAPMAN, 
Hillsdale, Michigan, 
Died May 5th, 
1865. 

So we had marked the grave. When the brother looked 
at the inscription, I saw the water come into his eyes, and 
turning to me, he said, "Sir, you have done all you could 
for my poor brother," and then expressed his hearty 
thanks. I told him I could do no less for any man who 
died at my door. He then informed me that our Presi- 
dent had been captured by other pursuers, and said that 
he would come back, after awhile, and take away his 
brother's body. As we all came back together, the thought 
would come into my mind that my brother was certainly 
going to lose his horse; but not so. They left me with 
bows, and went straight to Colonel Sloan's stable, where 
they found no horses. They next went to old Mrs. North's 
place ; met her carriage coming right out of her gate, 
and, taking her horses, left the carriage right in the gate- 
way, and started back to their camp, which was on the 
other side of the river. 

Immediately after their departure, I gladly took the 



REMIXISCEXCES OF THE AVAR. 



345 



horse and buggy, and, with my wife, whose nerves had 
been a good deal shaken, went for a good long drive to 
make some pastoral visits, which occupied me the greater 
part of the day. Returning from my circuit of visitations 
in the afternoon, what should I behold but the four sol- 
diers, now convicted thieves and prisoners. Old Captain 
John Maxwell they had threatened to murder the day 
before, but he had leaped on his blooded mare, old man as 
he was, clearing the fence, where she stood ready sad- 
dled, and escaped. On that occasion, there were other 
soldiers with them, and a major in command. This 
major, pursuing old Captain John and his blooded mare, 
which he must have coveted much, drew his pistol and 
fired, but at that moment, his own horse, throwing up its 
head, received the shot from his rider's pistol and fell. 
Xext day, Captain John, Major Ben Sloan, his nephew, 
and another nephew, met these four men, captured them, 
sent back Mrs. Xorth's horses, and brought the prisoners, 
and delivered them to the citizens of Pendleton. Some 
young counsellors would have dealt with them in a very 
summary way. Older heads, however, prevailed. The pris- 
oners were sent back that night, under guard of three 
armed men, to be delivered up to their general as horse 
thieves. On the return of these guards, they said their 
prisoners had knelt and begged for their lives in every 
dark place on the road, where the moonlight did not reach, 
and that they had at last set them loose before they 
reached the camp. It was feared they had otherwise dis- 
posed of them, but my man certainly reached his home 
in safety, for I got a letter from his old father, thanking 
me, and saying he would come for his son's body very 
soon. I advised him that it would not be healthy for him 
to visit us just then. Six months after this a squad of 
soldiers was sent from Anderson for the remains of the 
dead raider. 

In September, 1865, Dr. Howe, Dr. Woodrow, and my- 
self reopened the Seminary, Dr. Thornwell's chair being 
vacant through his lamented death in 1863. 

Previously to going down, I had announced to my 
slaves that they were all free. The coming of emancipa- 
tion had been talked of all through the summer, and thev 



346 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



had made inquiries about it of myself, and I had told 
them that, whenever it was determined, I should inform 
them of it. It was, perhaps, in August that the action of 
the State of South Carolina had settled the question, and 
I told them all that I could no longer employ them, and 
that they must find homes for themselves. They were 
about thirty in number. One of them, a man named Mor- 
ris, had a wife and a number of children, several of them 
well grown boys. He alone of the whole number ob- 
jected very much to the terms of their emancipation, 
having this large family to support. In general, they 
received the announcement with indifference. To Morris 
it seemed that the government had treated him very badly, 
in setting him free without "giving him a start," as he ex- 
pressed it. But he was a sober, faithful and industrious 
man, and his wife an excellent cook, and they soon found 
employment for themselves and their older boys, so that 
they could live on their wages. The whole company very 
soon scattered, and I lost sight of them all. 

My head man was Charles, surnamed Morgan. As I 
shall hereafter show, he was a character. He had a wife 
and one son, and this son had a wife and two daughters 
eight and ten years old. This son, named Alfred, I have 
previously mentioned as a remarkably intelligent and 
faithful negro. Hearing that wages were high at Mem- 
phis, Tenn., he counselled with me about moving there, 
and then did move with his wife and children. His old 
mother chose to go with her son, leaving her husband 
behind. It turned out, I fear, an unfortunate move, for 
a very few years after this a dreadful season of yellow 
fever visited Memphis, and thousands of negroes, as well 
as white people, fell victims. As I never heard of Alfred 
after this event, I am apprehensive that they all perished 
under this scourge. 

When, in 1847, it became settled that the abolitionists 
of New England would not allow me to return to my for- 
eign missionary work, and that I was to remain in my 
native city, and preach the gospel to the negroes, I became 
at once a householder and a slaveholder, an advisable step 
as regarded both the white people and the black. When, 
in 1852, I moved to Pendleton, and began the life of a 



REMINISCENCES OF THE WAR. 



347 



farmer for the saving of my eyesight, I purchased some 
slaves to work the land. Charles Morgan and his family 
were the first whom I bought. Naturally, having just 
come from the work of a missionary to the negroes in 
Charleston, I felt much interest in the religious condition 
of these people. Accordingly, I used earnest efforts to 
induce them to attend my family prayers every evening, 
and I also told them they must go to church in the village 
on Sunday. This I considered to be my duty as a Chris- 
tian master. After a Sunday or two, Charles came to me 
and said, "Master, I can obey orders, but I don't want 
you to tell me that I must go to church.'' And he went 
on to say that he did not believe in religion ; he had seen 
the time, he said, when he had often run miles to hear a 
certain preacher, and this man was afterwards found out 
in his wickedness. He further said that if he only was 
obedient to his earthly master, he had nothing else to be 
afraid of. I saw at once that I was dealing with a man 
who had a head on his shoulders with brains in it, but 
having also a heart in him full of unbelief. I said to him 
at once that he had mistaken me, and that he might be 
sure that I did not mean to take a stick to force him to 
pray, or to drive him to church with. Of course, no com- 
pulsory methods can be employed in bringing religion to 
negroes, or to any other men. 

This reminds me of something that occurred at 
Smyrna, Asia Minor. I was intimately acquainted with 
a converted Jew, John Cohen by name. His wife was a 
Greek, who had been educated in Ireland. Talking with 
my friend about his wife, I inquired if she was a praying 
woman. John knew English pretty well, but did not 
always remember the force of some of our idioms. His 
answer was, "Oh ! yes, my wife is a praying woman ; I 
make her pray." 

I had many talks with Charles subsequently. He was 
greatly attached to me personally, and I considered him 
to be a faithful servant, and so he came to be entrusted 
with all my plantation matters, and through him I gave 
all my orders to the rest. Once in awhile, they would ac- 
cuse him to me, and one gentleman in the village, that 
was smart enough himself in a trade, with whom Charles 



348 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES 



had dealings on my account, was known to have said, 
"Why, the old rascal; he cheats for his master.'' 

I tried to instruct him, and all my people, as to their 
duty to God and their own souls, and, I hope, not without 
some effect. But I have heard from that old negro as 
many and as astute objections to the revealed word as 
any infidel philosopher ever produced ; and it is my firm 
belief that every missionary to the darkest heathen people 
will sometimes meet this experience. These objections, 
whether in Christian or pagan lands, probably never orig- 
inate in the human heart. They are suggestions of the 
devil. 

I cannot claim that I fully performed my religious 
duty to my slaves, but I tried to do it. I was constantly 
away on Sundays, preaching myself. My wife continu- 
ally assembled both children and grown people on Sunday 
afternoons in our wide piazzas, reading and explaining 
the Scriptures to them, and teaching them to commit to 
memory verses of the Bible, and many of our best hymns, 
and to sing them to such tunes as best suited their musical 
taste. Moreover, my brothers and I employed a faithful, 
V earnest minister to preach to them at set times every 
week, and my children taught all of them to read who 
were disposed to learn. 

When Charles's whole family moved away to Memphis, 
he was not willing to go with them, nor yet dared to re- 
main in Pendleton. He told me once that he had made 
many enemies to himself on my account. It was cer- 
tainly true that he was not popular with his own race. 
He used to say that he could always get along very well 
with white people, but not, he would add, "with the col- 
ored popularity.' 7 So he wanted me to let him go with 
me to Columbia. That city was in ruins then, and for a 
good while afterwards. For some fifteen miles below that 
place, the railroad had been entirely destroyed, and it was 
a good while before it could be rebuilt, so there was much 
hauling of goods from that place up to town. I agreed, 
therefore, with Charles to let him have my four mules, 
and a big wagon, that he might go down, do some of this 
hauling, and make something for himself and me too. 
When that business came to an end, he found other work 



REMINISCENCES OF THE WAE. 



349 



in Columbia, but lie had trouble with his own color, whom 
lie accused of robbing him of all that he made. I was 
frequently called away for days together on seminary bus- 
iness, and. meanwhile, my family were still remaining in 
Pendleton. On one of these occasions. Charles fell sick 
and died. I was afterwards told by my cousin, the Kev. 
Dr. Boggs, who visited him in his sickness, that the ne- 
groes, amongst whom he died, had not left clothes enough 
to give the poor old man a decent burial. And this cousin 
said that many times during his last sickness he called for 
his old master. 

The emancipation of my negroes was a pecuniary loss 
to me of some twenty-five thousand dollars. But it was. 
at the same time, my deliverance from a very serious and 
weighty responsibility, and I have never once regretted 
the emancipation. Xor. though I frequently made in- 
quiries of men on this subject, did I ever find one who 
said he was sorry that it had taken place. 



CHAP TEE XI. 



Providential Dealings — Full Account of Revision. 
{Editorial Sate.) 

For some reason the work of preparing the eleventh 
chapter of Hy Lite and Times was left by the venerable 
author to be the last of his work, but before anything had 
been done upon it, he was called away. 

It was his design, as we understand it, that this chapter 
should contain a full account of that important work 
undertaken by the Southern Presbyterian Church in the 
very beginning of its history, and prosecuted through a 
series of years until completed in the adoption of the 
Booh of Church Order, embracing the '"Form of Govern- 
ment'' and the "Rules of Discipline.'' This work was. in 
one sense, a revision of the old Form of Government ; but 
it embodies certain distinctive principles, and the history 
of the process by which these came to be embodied in the 
organic law of the church, is one of intense interest. Xo 
one was better qualified to give the history of this work 
than Dr. Adger. He was himself an active participant 
in the labor involved, and brought to that labor a pro- 
found conviction of the importance of the principles 
which entered into it, and great earnestness of purpose in 
reviewing their embodiment in our organic law. It is 
greatly to be regretted that the story of this great work, 
which did not reach its completion until eighteen years 
after its beginning, could not have been a part of this vol- 
ume. Xo one is now left to us who was so closely iden- 
tified with it, and who so thoroughly understood it in all 
its phases, or who could so well have recorded it as a part 
of the history of our church. 



CHAP TEE XII.— Part 1. 



The Controversies of ]\Iy Times. 
1301-1861. 

THE controversies of the nineteenth century are a con- 
tinuation of those of the eighteenth and preceding 
centuries, followed by some peculiar to itself. 

1. The controversy with sceptical criticism, which 
would overthrow the inspiration of the sacred writings by 
affirming inspiration of the sacred writers, only, however, 
as all men of genius are inspired ; which would make 
human reason the a priori judge of divine revelation ; 
"which would undertake to eliminate all that is human 
out of the Christian Scriptures, and which reduces to 
myth or legend, or allegory, whatsoever in the divine 
records is unpalatable to its own taste." 

2. "The controversy with ontology, in that transcen- 
dental and pantheistic form of it which undertakes to 
show by metaphysics how the universe must have been 
evolved out of the absolute ; how the infinite becomes real 
in the finite ; how one is made all, and all are made one ; 
how God alone exists, and all things in the universe are 
but his phenomena." 

3. The controversy with the physical sciences, as, in the 
hands of some of their devotees, they turn against the 
Christian Scriptures, and seek to destroy their credi- 
bility. Geography and astronomy furnish specimens of 
these centuries ago. In the nineteenth century, geology 
and evolution of new species furnish other specimens. 
Such controversies as these form, in our day, the battle 
ground of the evidences of Christianity — a battle outside 
of, and against, the citadel itself. 

But besides these questions, there are various subjects 
of controversy amongst the professors of the Christian 
faith themselves. 

The church of Rome would like us all to believe that 
within herself all is peace and unity. But the contrary 
is very well known to be true. Her controversy, however, 



352 



LIFE A^L> TIMES 



with Protestants does not belong to the nineteenth century 
in any special sense. 

Leaving, therefore, the questions which divide Protes- 
tants and Roman Catholics, what divides the Protestants 
of Great Britain amongst themselves I It is questions of 
dissent and of conformity with the Establishment. And 
what divides the Establishment itself '. It is questions 
still about the church, between the Anglicans, and what 
they call the Ultra-Protestants. Pass to the Episco- 
palians of this country, and they also are very much 
engaged in the discussion of church questions among 
themselves. 

Amongst Congregationalists. there is unquestionably a 
firmer and more earnest faith in their distinctive views 
of church polity. Xo "plan of union" between them and 
any body of Presbvterians would now be a possibility on 
their side any more than on the other. Xevertheless, on 
various questions of theology proper, they are very much 
divided. 

With our Baptist brethren in the United States the in- 
crease of denominational zeal is exceedingly manifest. 
Some of them deny that Pedo-Baptist societies, or those 
that do not practise immersion, are any churches at all. 
The English Baptists are generally more liberal on these 
points. One important event, however, has occurred in 
the history of American Baptists, particularly those 
dwelling in the Southern States. They have been induced 
to accept the Westminster Confession of Eaith for their 
own. On the part of Presbyterians, there is. we believe, 
a stronger and clearer development of the primitive doc- 
trine of the church, membership of infants, even when 
only one parent is a church member. There is also 
amongst Presbyterians an increasing sense of the essen- 
tially schismatic position, both of American Baptists and 
High Church Episcopalians — of the former for rending 
the body of Christ about baptism, of the latter for rend- 
ing it about ordination. 

Then, as to the ALethodist Episcopal Church, there was 
amongst them a serious controversy, and even a division 
took place, on the point of the absence of any direct rep- 
resentation of the people in their conference. This, I be- 



THE CONTROVERSIES OE MY TIMES. 



353 



lieve, has been healed ; but there has risen a controversy 
respecting the heretical doctrine of immediate and perfect 
sanctification in this life. 

Leaving, again, these various questions agitating the 
differeat evangelical churches, I refer to a more general 
controversy, the millenarian, which yet is clearly a ques- 
tion of ecclesiology, that has been, and still is, widespread, 
both in Europe and this country. 

Another question, which has been very widely and 
bitterly discussed in this century, and which, in its most 
important bearings, is a question of ecclesiology, is that 
of slavery. For never did they touch bottom in that dis- 
cussion, until they inquired whether slaveholding is sin- 
ful, and must be made a matter of church discipline. 
Wherever these two simple questions were decided in the 
negative, the contention maintained by the slaveholder 
was won ; the fight immediately became a conflict, not 
with him, but Christianity and the Bible, and the struggle 
was transferred from the field of ecclesiology to that of 
the evidences. 

The same is true of the controversy of total abstinence, 
and some others like it. The settlement of this question 
upon scripture principles always determines the true 
limits of church power, as well as defines the true nature 
of the Christian virtue of temperance. 

Thus it would seem to be true, to a considerable extent, 
that the controversies of this nineteenth century have been 
questions about the church, her nature, her mission, her 
functions, her powers, her officers, her members. The 
questions have not been about points of abstract princi- 
ple, nor doctrines of systematic divinity, but points of 
church order, church work, church discipline. 

Now, I do not propose, in this twelfth chapter of My 
Life and Times, to discuss any of these questions to which 
I have referred. What I attempt is certain controversies 
confined to the American Presbyterian church during this 
nineteenth century. I commence with 

The Old and New School Controversy. 
This had its beginning at the commencement of this 
century, and culminated in 1837 and 1S38. The leader of 



354 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



this culmination was Robert J. Breckinridge, who was or- 
dained to the ministry in 1832. The Princeton professors 
did not take a leading part, but they were all on the right 
side. Theological professors do not generally take the lead 
in such controversies ; they feel unwilling to prejudice the 
interests of their institution. It is just so with presi- 
dents of colleges and orphanages, and with the secretaries 
of Assembly boards or executive committees. They are 
all afraid to take any decided part in questions which 
divide the church. Each has something of his own which 
he is very liable to regard more than the interests of the 
whole church. Accordingly, when the Assembly was 
asked to establish a theological seminary at Danville, Ky., 
and some opposition to the proposition was made by the 
friends of Princeton, we hear Dr. Breckinridge saying 
in true Kentucky style, "You have Princeton, but we 
want a thing of our own ; if you won't let us have a thing 
of our own, we will come here and take your thing away 
from you, and carry it out to Kentucky." 

The controversy in question was the fruit of a com- 
promise between Congregational independency and Pres- 
byterianism. The Plan of Union, entered into in 1801, 
allowed churches in the new settlements, chiefly of the 
Northwest, which were generally composed of both ele- 
ments, to elect pastors from either denomination, con- 
ducting their discipline according to either Congrega- 
tional or Presbyterian principles, as the majority of their 
members might determine. Where the majority were 
Presbyterians, elders might rule ; if the majority of 
members were Congregationalists, then committeemen 
might be appointed in their stead ; and, when appeals had 
to come before a presbytery these committeemen were 
allowed all the rights and functions of ruling elders. And 
yet none of these committeemen had ever been required to 
subscribe any symbols of faith. Of course, it is easy to 
see that the result must be a hybrid system, both as to 
doctrine and church order. It has been well said "that 
churches, presbyteries and synods were born of it, all 
which, like Jacob's cattle, were ring-streaked, speckled, 
and grizzled," the product was Presbyter ianism and Con- 
gregationalism, but especially the latter. The Plan of 



THE COXTPvOVEKSIES OF MY TIMES 



355 



Union was paramount to the Constitution of the Presby- 
terian Church. From the very nature of things, the laxer 
system superseded the stricter. Then also, as a matter of 
course, laxity of doctrine accompanied indifference to or- 
der. Church government and church discipline are the 
necessary bulwarks of church doctrine, and it is the Lord 
himself who has thus hedged round for their protection 
the truths which he has revealed. It was not strange, 
therefore, that the Plan of Union freely tolerated errors 
in doctrine. The dangerous theological speculations which, 
at this period, overran Xew England, were carried by the 
Congregational missionaries into the Northwest, and very 
soon the most fatal departures from gospel truth spread 
all over the churches planted there. I cannot particular- 
ize, but must simply affirm that the very foundations of 
the Westminster standards of doctrine were thus over- 
turned. But for a fuller and very trustworthy account 
of all these matters the reader may consult Dr. Samuel J. 
Baird's History of the New School, or the fourteenth 
chapter of Dr. Palmer's admirable volume, Thorn well's 
Life and Letters. 

Presbyterians believe that Jesus Christ has a kingdom 
in this world, which is his church, whose constitution and 
laws he has distinctly revealed in the word. This church 
is his agency for the gathering and edifying of his people, 
and for the propagation of the faith throughout the world. 
It has always been understood by real Presbyterians that 
the church herself is to do the work for which she was in- 
stituted, instead of employing voluntary societies to act 
in her stead. And from their earliest emigration to this 
country, they have, so far as able, always endeavored to 
act out this belief. 

On the other hand, Independency, from the incom- 
pleteness of its organization, is necessarily compelled to 
work through other agencies not under her direct author- 
ity. Hence there originated amongst the individual and 
separated Christian congregations of ^sTew England three 
great voluntary societies, one to do the church's work 
of education, a second her work of home missions, and a 
third the work of propagating her faith abroad. They 
were Xew England societies, but they chose to call them- 



356 



MY EIFE AND TIMES. 



selves the American Education Society, the American 
Home Mission Society, and the American Board of Com- 
missioners for Foreign Missions, popularly knoAvn as the 
A. B. C. F. M. 

I would not ascribe to ambition the prefix of American 
by these societies to their own proper names. The Pil- 
grim Fathers were on these shores long before the Scotch- 
Irish Presbyterians came in, and were grown rich and 
strong while these later pilgrims and strangers were still 
poor and weak. It was quite natural for Xew England 
to consider herself the whole country, and, accordingly, 
to claim that great name for herself. The American Edu- 
cation Society, founded in Boston in 1815, deserved the 
respect of all good men, and very soon acquired large re- 
ceipts for its high purpose of educating young men for 
the gospel ministry. Many were very glad to buy hon- 
orary membership on its rolls at a high price in money. 
It had branch societies distributed all over the land, and 
it aspired to the educating of ministers for the whole 
country. The Presbyterians were not able, for a long 
time, to compete with this society. But in 1818 they or- 
ganized a Presbyterian Education Society in Philadel- 
phia, "which should be under the inspection of the Gen- 
eral Assembly, and a faithful representative of the whole 
denomination." "But the foreign influences, which had 
been imported into the body, set themselves at once to 
counteract the policy thus indicated. A rival organiza- 
tion was instantly created, under a similar name, which 
refused to acknowledge Assembly control, and soon went 
over bodily to the American Education Society, and be- 
came its active instrument in promoting its ascendancy 
within the entire limits of the Presbyterian Church. 
Meanwhile, the church board languished for years, by 
reason of this opposition, together with its own restricted 
powers and the general inefficiency in its management, 
until 1831, when it was reorganized under the charge of 
the Bev. Dr. John Breckinridge as its secretary. Then at 
once it sprang into vigor, and held its own against all 
rivalry, until the hour of complete deliverance from all 
this thraldom was chimed in 1837." " 

* Dr. Baird's History, pp. 283-292, and Thornwell's Life and 
Letters, p. 200. 



THE CO^TROVEKSIES OF MY TIMES. 



357 



As to the A. B. C. F. M., it should be stated that at its 
first organization, in 1810, Boston and its surroundings, 
with other New England towns on the Atlantic coast, must 
have far excelled any other portion of this coast as to in- 
tercourse with foreign nations. New York itself, at that 
time, had very small pretentions. The hardy sons of New 
England were, in multitudes of cases, born seamen. They 
not only carried on the whale fishery in the South Seas, 
but the commerce of those States was by them extended 
far and wide, and their ships visited various foreign na- 
tions. Meantime, the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian emigra- 
tion found its way chiefly inland to Pennsylvania and 
Virginia, and thence westward and southward. They 
were not maritime people. Accordingly, the dwellers 
on the New England coast had foreign nations much more 
in their eye and in their thoughts than our agricultural 
forefathers. It was natural, therefore, that New Eng- 
land Christians should precede them in the foreign mis- 
sionary work. 

It should also be stated that the A. B. C. F. M. had a 
remarkable birth. Four young students of divinity, men 
of broad intelligence and lofty aspirations, meeting to- 
gether often for conference and prayer about the kingdom 
of Christ behind a certain hay-stack in some New Eng- 
land field, first conceived the idea of becoming mission- 
aries to the heathen. They it was who stirred up their 
fathers in the New England ministry to form the A. B. C. 
F. M. 

It should be stated, further, that not very long after 
the first organization of this New England board, its cor- 
porate membership is found to include a number of prom- 
inent Presbyterian ministers in New York City and else- 
where. Dr. Samuel Miller, the Princeton professor of 
high Presbyterian reputation, I recall to mind as being 
one of these, and he continued such until about 1832 or 
1833. 

But in the early history of American Presbyterianism 
the church's duty of doing, in her organic form, this work 
of the foreign propagation of the faith, as well as train- 
ing her own ministry, had been clearly recognized. As 
early as 1751, a collection was ordered to be taken each 



358 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



year in every church, to send the gospel to the heathen, 
and upon this fund David Brainard was sustained among 
the Indians until his death, in 1781. In 1802, the Synod 
of Pittsburgh resolved itself into a foreign mission so- 
ciety, with a regular constitution and officers. In the 
same year, the Synod of the Carolinas sent two mission- 
aries to the Natchez Indians, and one to the Catawbas, 
conducting the work through a commission regularly ap- 
pointed. At the same period, 1802, the Assembly ap- 
pointed a standing committee of foreign missions. Mean- 
while, various local foreign mission societies had sprung 
up, all subject to the church. In 1817, the subject of for- 
eign missions came again before the Assembly, the result 
of which was the organization of the "United Foreign 
Mission Society," composed of Presbyterian, Reformed 
Dutch, and Associate Reformed Churches, receiving the 
sanction of the ecclesiastical bodies to which they be- 
longed. For eight years it prosecuted its work with vigor, 
gradually absorbing all the local societies. However, in 
1824, the Synod of Pittsburgh transferred their missions 
to its care, supposing it would continue always a Presby- 
terian body. Yet, at the very moment of this transfer, 
negotiations were in progress with the A. B. C. F. M., 
which soon absorbed the whole. There remained, there- 
fore, to the Presbyterian Church no Indian missions at 
all, because those of the Synod of the Carolinas, which 
date back to 1802, had already, in 1818, been transferred 
to the American Board. 

But soon the Western Foreign Mission Society was 
revived in the Synod of Pittsburgh. It presented itself 
to the Assembly of 1832 for recognition,, having its first 
missionaries chosen, and their field to be Western Africa. 
Three years afterwards, that is, in 1835, it had twenty 
missionaries under its care, laboring in western Africa, 
northern India, and among several Indian tribes at home. 
Accordingly, the Assembly now began negotiations with 
the Synod of Pittsburgh for a transfer of all these to it- 
self. But the Assembly of 1836, under imported foreign 
influences, receded from this proposal. Then came the 
glorious period of 1837 and 1838, and the Revolution, 
which forever committed our church to carrying on 
directly its own foreign mission work. 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



359 



But the great battle between the two uncongenial par- 
ties united together in 1801, resulted from their work 
on the same field of home missions. The Presbyterians 
made a beginning on that field as early as 1802, but down 
to 1816, the date of the first establishment of their Board 
of Domestic Missions, their efforts were crippled, as Dr. 
Palmer expresses it, through the opposition engendered 
by what should rightly be called the "Plan of Conten- 
tion," rather than the "Plan of Union." There soon 
grew up out of this opposition what was called the United 
Domestic Missionary Society. This, in 1826, resolved it- 
self into the American Home Mission Society, which was 
planned in a meeting of delegates from the New England 
churches, held in Boston early in the same year. Dr. Ab- 
salom Peters was at the head of this latter institution, and 
he made it his constant effort to absorb the Presbyterian 
Board. He first contrived to gain over to his views Dr. 
Ezra Stiles Ely, the secretary of the Assembly Board at 
Philadelphia, and these two soon labored together for the 
amalgamation of the Presbyterian Boards and the Amer- 
ican Home Mission Society. This project failing, Dr. 
Absalom Peters next endeavored to plant a branch of his 
society in the West, at Cincinnati, hoping the Assembly 
would carry on its work in the West through this branch 
as a common agency. His design was, says Dr. Palmer, 
either to drive the Presbyterian Church out of the West 
as a field of operations, or so to control her movements 
that they should be wholly subordinate to the interests of 
Congregationalism. At length, it was found necessary, 
for the protection of Presbyterianism, that a convention 
of representatives from all the Western Synods should 
be held at Cincinnati in November of 1831. Here the 
question at issue between Congregationalism and the 
Presbyterian Church was definitely settled in resolutions, 
to the entire and final defeat of all the schemes of Dr. 
Absalom Peters and the American Home Mission Society. 
The convention resolved that "it is inexpedient to propose 
any change in the General Assembly's mode of conducting 
domestic missions, fully approving of that now in such 
successful operation; and that the purity, peace, and 
prosperity of the Presbyterian Church materially de- 



360 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



pended on the active and efficient aid which the sessions 
and presbyteries under its care may afford to the As- 
sembly's board. Dr. Palmer says, "With the American 
Education Society to train a ministry in lax theology, and 
with the American Home Mission Society to distribute 
and support them in their field of labor, it was simply a 
question of time to trample the Confession of Faith in 
the dust, to lay prostrate the whole constitution and or- 
der of our church, and to render the entire Presbyterian 
Church a bound vassal under New England theology and 
Xew England control. 

Such were the vexatious contentions, both as to doctrine 
and polity, with which the so-called Plan of Union had 
tormented the Presbyterian Church for more than thirty 
years.* There ensue now the famous trials of the Rev. 
Albert Barnes for heresy. He had published a sermon 
in 1S2S on "The Way of Salvation." The case went up 
from the presbytery, through the synod, to the Assembly 
of 1831, where the sermon of Mr. Barnes was only cen- 
sured for unguarded and objectionable passages. In 
1835 he was again tried on the charges of heresy, brought 
by Dr. George Junkin, based on his recently published 
commentary on Romans. The case reached the Assem- 
bly of 1836, by which Mr. Barnes was sustained. An- 
other flagrant outrage by that Assembly was the creation 
of what was appropriately designated an "Elective Af- 
finity Presbytery" in the Synod of Philadelphia, and 
against its remonstrances. This consisted of a company 
of ministers and churches, pointed out by name, thrown 
together because of their doctrinal sympathies and irre- 
spective of geographical boundaries. Then, to place this 
body beyond the reach of synodical action, it was erected, 
with two others of like sentiment, into the Synod of Dela- 
ware. Here was not only an asylum provided for men 
unsound in the faith, but presbyteries were created to 
license candidates who would everywhere else be rejected. 

In the year 1833 came to the Assembly a memorial 
from Ohio, known as the Western Memorial, testifying 



* It had also introduced into her ministry many men untrue both 
to her doctrine and order. 



THE COXTKOVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 361 

against nine specified doctrinal errors, and urging the 
repeal of the Plan of Union and all special arrangements 
with the Congregational churches. During the session of 
the Assembly of 1834, the famous "Act and Testimony' 7 ' 
was drawn up by the pen of Rev. Dr. R. J. Breckinridge, 
This paper closed with a recommendation for a conven- 
tion, to be held next year. This convention prepared a 
memorial to the Assembly of 1835, which received from 
it a measure of consideration, and raised hopes of ulti- 
mate reform excited only to be blasted ; for the next As- 
sembly, that of 1836, was more radical than any that had 
preceded. This was the Assembly that cleared Mr. 
Barnes of heresy. But, in 1837, for the first time in sev- 
eral consecutive years, the orthodox party found itself in 
a small majority. The business of reform was brought 
before this body in an able "Testimony and Memorial' 7 
from the pen of Dr. Breckinridge, making sixteen speci- 
fications as to false doctrine (which the reader may find 
in Palmer s Life of Thomwell, p. 195), and proposing the 
immediate abrogation of the Plan of Union, the discoun- 
tenancing of the American Education and Home Mission- 
ary Societies, and other measures of like character. It 
was then carried that, by this abrogation, the four Synods 
of Utica, Geneva, Genessee, and Western Reserve, which 
were founded upon this platform, are, and are hereby, de- 
clared to be, no longer a part of the Presbyterian Church 
in the United States of America. This action has been 
assailed as unconstitutional. But the Plan of Union being 
established simply by legislative act, it could equally as 
well, Dr. Archibald Alexander maintained, be declared, 
by legislative act, null and void. Of course, the platform 
on which they stood, being taken away, the presbyteries 
and synods which stood upon it fell to the ground. 

"In the following year, 1838, commissioners from these 
exscinded synods presented themselves with their creden- 
tials. 'No sooner had the opening prayer been offered 
than Dr. Patton arose, with certain resolutions in his 
hand." The moderator, Dr. William S. Plumer, pro- 
nounced him out of order, "since, till the roll was made 
out of those who had regular commissions, there was no 
house to hear him." Dr. Patton appealed to the house. 



362 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



The moderator replied, "There is no house to appeal to." 
Being defeated by the tact and firmness of the moderator, 
the only resource of these intruders was to attempt their 
organization of an Assembly, by a loud call, from Mr. 
Cleaveland, in the body of the house, upon Dr. Xathan 
S. S. Beman to take the chair. This gentleman stepped 
into the aisle, where, in the utmost confusion, a few 
questions and answers were spoken, and the whole party 
retired to organize in another building. "The disrup- 
tion," says Dr. Palmer (page 209), "was effected. The 
Old and New Schools were now distinctly apart, and those 
who stood by the Constitution of the Church, in a strict 
interpretation of her symbols of doctrine and principles 
of government, rejoiced in a great deliverance. " 

This disruption of the Presbyterian Church extended, 
more or less, through all its synods and all its presby- 
teries. It divided the Charleston Union Presbytery, 
which had ordained me to the foreie^L mission work, into 
\ two bodies — one the Charleston Union Presbytery, and 
the other the Charleston Presbytery. This latter corres- 
ponded with the foreign missionaries, which had been 
sent out, to know on which side they would stand. My 
sympathies and opinions had always been strongly on the 
Old School side, and I, therefore, requested to be enrolled 
with the Presbytery of Charleston. 

The Board Controversy. 

Dr. Palmer well remarks that there was left over a 
"residuary bequest" — "a sort of remainder" — from the 
original controversy with which the church was rent in 
1837— '38.* This bequest and remainder was the board 
controversy. One expression which he uses in relation to 
this very point is liable to be misunderstood. He says, 
"During the period, when the church was brought under 
a species of vassalage to Congregationalism, the great 
national societies, which usurped her functions, conducted 
their operations by the agency of boards. The church 
had become familiar with that mode of action," etc. Xo 
one will deny the influence of Congregationalism upon 



* See Life and Letters, pp. 182-221. 



THE COXTEOYERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



363 



the Presbyterian Church, especially in those portions of 
it most contiguous to New England; nor that in the 
Northwestern wilderness, where the American Education 
Society and the American Home Mission Society chiefly 
operated, there was brought about a vassalage of the Pres- 
byterian Church to Congregationalism. Of course, Dr. 
Palmer did not mean to apply his remark to our church in 
all its parts and portions. Neither is he to be understood 
as meaning that our whole church had become familiar 
with that mode of action in the sense of becoming, in any 
degree, satisfied with it. The sturdy Scotch-Irish Presby- 
terians of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, and the 
Carolinas, who constituted the bulk of our Presbyterian 
Church in those days, had been educated better by their 
fathers, and could not approve the mixing up of the 
church with voluntary associations. They tolerated the 
Plan of Union, but, from the first, they did not like it, and 
it was influence from such quarters that finally overthrew 
it. If "boards, exactly analagous" to the hybrid ones, 
were established, it was not the work of these real Presby- 
terians. Erom the beginning, Philadelphia had become 
the centre of the Presbyterian Church in this country. 
Philadelphia and contiguous parts of Pennsylvania and 
New Jersey, together with large portions of rural New 
York, had long felt the influence of their near neighbors, 
the Congregationalists. The new boards all centred in 
Philadelphia, and their leading members, as well as those 
of every Assembly, for some time, came largely from the 
districts I have named. The Assembly itself, from the 
beginning, with only five exceptions, met every year in 
Philadelphia, until, as Dr. Breckinridge expressed it, 
"we got it set on wheels in 1844," and it came thereby 
under other influences than those of "the mother city." 
It will hardly be maintained, therefore, that our church, 
as a whole, had become familiar with action through 
boards, in the sense of being fascinated with them, when 
it is considered that in less than two years after the abro- 
gation of the Plan of Union, there began a most de- 
termined opposition to the continuance of these methods. 

When Calvin undertakes to state the true doctrine of 
the church, he begins, first, with her relation to God, and 



364 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



then her relation to ns. "The church is a divine institu- 
tion, an external help to nourish the faith begotten in us. 
God has given her the gospel with pastors and teachers. 
He has invested them with authority. He has omitted 
nothing which might conduce to holy consent in the faith 
and to right order." Here is Jus Divinum Presbyterii. 
The church being the work of God's hand, let no man dare 
essay any change or improvement in its structure. It is 
incredible that God, who instituted the church, should 
tolerate any human alterations in it. If Christ is the 
Head and King, we must let him rule in his kingdom. 

As to the church's relation to us, Calvin says that scrip- 
ture makes her "our mother." Though popery fatally, 
and prelacy too much, exaggerate this idea, yet Presbyte- 
rians make far too little of the church. As our mother, it 
is hers to nourish us when we are babes, and train us up 
to be adults in faith. I do not say that she does all this, 
but Calvin is certainly right in maintaining that such is 
our Father's design in instituting the church. She is to 
be a mother to us, and, as such, to be revered and obeyed 
by us in the Lord. The authority of church officers and 
church courts is not from the people, as the Congregation- 
alists imagine. It is put upon them by God. 

Of the power given of God to the church, Calvin makes 
three departments — the power diatactic or legislative, the 
power diacritic or judicial, and the power dogmatic or 
doctrinal. Now, let it be observed that of legislative 
power very little indeed is conferred on the church. 
Jesus Christ stands alone as King in his kingdom. Her 
officers are not his councillors, but only his servants. Not 
a law can the church make, out of her own discretion, ad- 
ditionally to those he has given her. She is permitted to 
act only by divine command. For everything set up by 
her she must produce a "thus saith the Lord." In the 
whole sphere of religion, whatever is not commanded is 
forbidden. This is the ground of the great Protestant 
maxim, that the Bible is our only, and our sufficient, 
rule of faith and practice. "The whole counsel of God 
concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's 
salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in 
scripture, or, by good and necessary consequence, may be 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



365 



deduced from scripture, unto which nothing is, at any 
time, to be added, whether by new revelations of the 
Spirit or traditions of men." Our doctrine, our disci- 
pline, our worship, are all divine and revealed things, 
to which the church can add, from which she can take 
away, nothing. r\"o more discretion has the church in 
regulating those who compose her membership. They 
are the free sons of God, and she cannot bind their con- 
sciences. Neither contrary to the scriptures, nor yet in 
addition to the scriptures, can she impose any new duties 
not imposed on men by the word. On the other hand, she 
cannot make anything to be sinful which God himself has 
not, in his holy word, forbidden. In fine, the church has 
no legislative power, except as to the mere circumstances 
of time and place, order and decency, which, from the 
nature of the case, scripture could not regulate, and which 
must needs be left, and have therefore been left, to hu- 
man discretion. Respecting such circumstances as these 
the divine law is, let all things be done decently and in 
order. All the power which the church has about laws is 
declarative and ministerial. Her officers declare, not 
their own will, but the Lord's, and that only as he makes 
it known in the word, which is open to all men, and which 
every man is entitled to judge of and interpret for himself. 

Such are the principles that were involved in the board 
controversy. Christ being sole Head and King of his 
church, having given to her .all the officers she needs, hav- 
ing revealed to them in what way they were to carry on 
her work, having limited her obedience to those things 
which he has commanded, and what he has not com- 
manded being therefore forbidden, his church was to 
do his work herself, not remit it to any voluntary associa- 
tion. Still further, she was not to turn it over to any or- 
ganized body of one hundred men which she herself 
might appoint. She was to be herself the Lord's agent, 
and not invent neAv agencies through which she might act. 
Of course, the church herself could not directly execute 
her Lord's commands. She must have officers or agents, 
such as committees, to execute her work. The reader will 
easily perceive the fundamental character of the board 
question. 



366 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



Under the Plan of Union, or, more properly, of Con- 
tention, which lasted for thirty-six years — that is to say, 
from 1801-1837 — the Presbyterian Church had grown to 
be accustomed to the idea of church action, not direct, but 
through appointed boards. When the church was lib- 
erated from the Plan of Union, she continued to act upon 
this same idea. Her boards of foreign and domestic 
missions, education, etc., were made to consist each of 
about one hundred men, usually the most prominent men 
in the church, resident all over her territory, from north 
to south and from east to west. It was not expected that 
these dignitaries would be able to leave their homes and 
their employments, from time to time — say, every month 
— and repair, at great expense of time and money, to 
Philadelphia, then the centre of the church and the seat 
of these boards. Their appointments were simply hon- 
orary — honorary to the individual men, and, because of 
their individual eminence, honorary to the cause it was 
expected their names should promote and advance. It 
was even allowed that these honors might, in a sense, be 
purchased with money. The giver of one hundred dol- 
lars might become, not, indeed, a voting member, but 
would still be acknowledged in honor of his gift as a mem- 
ber of the board. To have his name entered on the pub- 
lished list with those of so many great and eminent per- 
sons, would be considered, by many a man of money, an 
honor not dearly purchased at the price of one hundred 
dollars. Such being the arrangement made, of course 
very few of the voting members of the board ever at- 
tended its annual meetings. There was an executive com- 
mittee of each of these boards, its members residing 
either in the city of Philadelphia, or within easy reach 
of that city, and these persons were the actual working 
members of each board. These executive committees pre- 
pared their annual reports to their respective boards. 
The boards, so far as they were ever present, would hear, 
consider, and accept these reports, and then they would 
present them as their own reports of whatever had been 
done, to the General Assembly. 

Manifestly, these boards were of no real or important 
good use. They simply stood between the church and the 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



367 



work that was committed to her hands. The executive 
committees were a real, and, indeed, indispensable, in- 
strument, through which the church could efficiently oper- 
ate, and was operating. But the boards were just so many 
encumbrances in the way of the church. 

It was in the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, 
meeting in the city of Augusta in ISiO, a little more than 
two years after the overthrow of the Plan of Union and 
its machinery, that Dr. Thornwell first publicly assailed 
this incongruous system of boards. He submitted a doc- 
ument carefully prepared beforehand. The majority re- 
jected his paper, his views being sustained by only a very 
respectable minority. Forwarding this document to Dr. 
Breckinridge for publication in the Baltimore Literary 
and Religious Magazine, he says, "I believe that the 
boards will eventually prove our masters, unless they are 
crushed in their infancy. They are founded upon a 
radical misconception of the true nature and extent of 
ecclesiastical power ; and they can only be defended by 
running into the principle, against which the Reformers 
protested, and for which the Oxford divines are now zeal- 
ously contending." "What he means is that the inventors 
of the board system do not view the church as, strictly 
speaking, a divine institution, which man may not at- 
tempt to mend ; nor do they understand that the power 
of the church is limited entirely to those things which 
God has commanded her to do. He means to say that the 
Reformers held strictly to this limitation on the powers 
of the church. He means that the Oxford divines were 
zealously contending for the church's right to make laws, 
devise ceremonies, appoint saints 7 days, and do whatever 
seemed to her advisable. 

Previously to the synod's meeting, he had written, in 
August, 18^0, to the Rev. John Douglas, "I am satisfied 
that there is a dangerous departure, in the present age 
of bustle, activity, and vain-glorious enterprise, from the 
simplicity of the institutions which Christ has established 
for the legitimate action of the church. He has appointed 
one set of instrumentalities, and ordained one kind of 
agency in his kingdom ; but we have made void his com- 
mandments, in order to establish our oavii inventions. I 



368 



MY -LIFE AND TIMES. 



believe that the entire system of voluntary societies and 
ecclesiastical boards for religious purposes, is fundamen- 
tally wrong. The church, as organized by her Head, is 
competent to do all that he requires of her. He has fur- 
nished her with the necessary apparatus of means, officers, 
and institutions, in sessions, presbyteries, elders, pastors, 
and evangelists. Let us take Presbyterianism, as we have 
it described in our Form of Government, and let us carry 
it out in its true spirit, and we shall have no use for the 
sore evil of incorporated boards, vested funds, and trav- 
elling agencies. If it is wrong to hold these principles, it 
was certainly wrong to lay down such a form for the gov- 
ernment of the church ; and if we do not intend to execute 
the form, let us cease requiring our ministers to assent to 
it. Such is a skeleton of my views." 

Dr. Thornwell's article in the Baltimore magazine was 
reviewed by Dr. Smyth, and a rejoinder appeared from 
Dr. Thornwell in the magazine. 

Writing again to Dr. Breckinridge, January 17, 1842, 
he says that evidently "the first principles of ecclesias- 
tical polity are not clearly understood among us. The 
fundamental fallacy ... is that the church, instead 
of being the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, is really 
one of his counsellors and his confidential agent. This 
rotten principle is the basis of the whole fabric of dis- 
cretionary power, and the multitude of inventions which 
have sprung from human prudence." 

This controversy, rising into public notice first in the 
Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, occupied the atten- 
tion of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of 
America until its very last Assembly, at Rochester, NT. Y., 
in 1860. There it gave rise to a very great debate, and 
the Northern and Southern Presbyterian Churches spoke 
their last words to each other in each other's presence. 
Each had its representative. The advocates of boards 
were largely in the majority, and were led by the eminent, 
trusted, and beloved Charles Hodge, educator, in part, of 
many hundreds of Presbyterian ministers. His name is 
known and revered by all on this continent, and multi- 
tudes in Europe. The majority, which he led, stood on its 
own territory, far up North and East, in the State of New 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



369 



York. Dr. Hodge was surrounded by a multitude of 
friends and admirers, all lending him their support and 
encouragement for every word that he uttered. The mi- 
nority had for their representative and leader James 
Henley Thornwell. He had a few friends at his side, all, 
like him, far from home, in an unfamiliar region. To by 
far the greater part of those who heard him in that debate 
he was an almost unknown stranger, and they certainly 
were strangers to him, giving him no looks or smiles of 
encouragement. But before that debate closed, all those 
strangers had found out wlio, and, in some degree, what 
this stranger was. 

The question, as proposed by the friends of the board 
(Dr. Thornwell accepting the form in which they put it), 
was, Is it expedient to make any organic change in the 
organization of the Board of Domestic Missions ? 

Dr. Thornwell said, "It is not very long since the 
friends of this system insisted that the difference between 
us and them was nominal, mere hair-splitting, the differ- 
ence merely twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee.* But 
it is now admitted that the difference is important, it is 
vital and essential, the things at stake are substance, and 
not shadow, the thing that was declared to be mere ab- 
straction begins to be viewed as something very danger- 
ous. Moderator, I accept that view of our differences 
which makes them real and important. I do not depre- 
cate this discussion. We all love the truth, and are 
equally concerned for the honor of Christ's church. We 
have no by-ends to subserve. I am no party man, but I 
am thoroughly a Presbyterian. I wish to state the 
grounds upon which I shall cast my vote. The question 
before us is but an offshoot from another question. Our 
differences about boards spring from our differences as 
to the nature and constitution of the church. Some of us 
hold that God gave us our church government as truly 
as our doctrine, and that we have no more right to add to 
the one than to the other. They hold that, while the 
church may, of course, employ whatever agency is really 
necessary to do the work entrusted to her, for that is im- 



* This language had been publicly used by Dr. Hodge. 



370 



MY LIFE A>"D TIMES 



plied in the very command which enjoins her duty, yet 
she has no right to create a new church court, or other 
body of whatever name, to stand in her place. 

"Others, as wise and as good men as the first, believe 
that no definite form of church government is given, but 
God has left it to man to organize his church, just as 
civil government was ordained of God in general, but 
man is left to arrange the particular form as may, in his 
view, best suit particular circumstances. In like manner, 
these hold in respect to church government : God gave 
only general principles, and man is to work out of them 
the best system that he can. The first party hold that God 
gave us a church ; presbyteries and assemblies, presbyters 
and deacons — all the functionaries necessary to a com- 
plete organization of his kingdom upon earth. He has 
revealed an order as well as a faith. Our attitude, in the 
one case, is to hear and believe ; in the other, it is to hear 
and obey. 

''One of the two parties represented here to-day, ac- 
cepts the motto, 'You may do all that the scriptures do 
not forbid ; ' the other, "You can do only what the scrip- 
tures command.' This second party, whose main prin- 
ciple I just now stated, contends that man is not to be the 
counsellor of God, but is to accept the church as it comes 
from God, and do what he enjoins. They contend that 
we cannot appoint a coordinate body to do the work which 
God appointed his church to do. They contend that the 
General Assembly, as representative of the church, is, and 
ought to be held to be, itself the board of missions. They 
contend for the great principles of Presbyterian Church 
order, as revealed in the Bible. The oneness of the 
church, its federative unity, is one of these principles, 
but another is the representative principle. Upon this 
principle it is that any of us are here, and upon this prin- 
ciple it is that all of us are alike here, elders as well as 
ministers, all upon the same footing, as representatives of 
the church. We are all here as ruling elders. It is in 
this capacity, as rulers in Christ's kingdom, that all the 
members of this court have committed to them for the 
church that work which they may not delegate to any 
other body. The church has a charter of faith and of 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



371 



practice, and wherever she cannot plead the authority of 
God, she has no right to act. She has no opinion ; she has 
a faith. She has no contrivances ; she has a law. Her 
authority is all ministerial and declarative. She only de- 
clares the law of the Lord, and only exercises the powers 
he gives, and only executes the work he enjoins. No other 
regulations are left for her to make and to enforce save 
those of circumstantial details ; and the power to make 
these is implicitly contained in the general commands 
given to her. It is also explicitly given in the precept to 
'do all things decently and in order.' Whatever executive 
agency is requisite in order to do her appointed work she 
can, of course, employ ; but she may not go outside of this 
necessity, and transfer her work to another body to be 
performed by it. 

"Now," said Dr. Thornwell, "if this notion of church 
power be conceded; if we correctly apprehend the real 
nature of church courts as divine institutions, and if we 
duly conceive of the solemnity and responsibility of all 
their action, then we are prepared to see how all this bears 
upon the question of boards. What, then, is a board — one 
of our boards, a board of our Assembly, as distinguished 
from a simple committee ? 

"In the first place, it is an organism, and not an organ. 
It is a complete body. It is a complete whole. It has 
head, body, limbs, hands, tongue, and now they want to 
give it feet. It has a president for its head, with a body 
of many members ; it has an executive committee for its 
hands ; and uoav our brethren propose, by a travelling 
secretary, to give it feet to travel — to travel over the 
whole land. Now wherein does this church body differ 
from a church court % Talk of this as a mere organ ! 
Talk of this as a mere hand ! It is a hand that has an 
arm of its own, and a head of its own to direct it. It is 
as completely a moral person as any court in the Presby- 
terian Church. In what, I ask, does it differ from a synod 
or a presbytery ? You say the board is responsible to the 
General Assembly ; so is a synod. You say a breath can 
annihilate the board ; so it may a synod. In fact, we see 
the board standing side by side with the General Assem- 
bly itself, as fully officered, as complete in its organiza- 



372 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



tion, and, so far as regards its component members, more 
perpetual in its existence. 

'"'In the second place, what is the relation to the Assem- 
bly of the boards, as thus completely organized 1 They 
are the vicars of the Assembly. God gave the church a 
work to do in her organized capacity : she refuses to do 
that work in that organized capacity, but appoints another 
organization- to do it in its organized capacity. The 
boards are the representatives of the church in its organ- 
ized capacity. This is. in fact, admitted privately by 
our brethren, for they hold that when a board acts, the 
Assembly acts. They will tell you the boards do the work 
of the Assembly in the place of the Assembly : and they 
quote the maxim, which we admit to be applicable here. 
Qui facit per alium facit per se. But,. Moderator, who 
gave the courts of the church a right to act, in their organ- 
ized capacity, by vicars, or 'representatives' \ Congress 
has power to make certain laws : can Congress delegate 
this power to another body \ 

"In the third place, let us look at the methods of action 
which have been adopted by these creations, and we shall 
see still more plainly that they are complete organizations, 
and also that they work evil, and not good. The practical 
ends of the boards have been two — to awaken interest and 
to increase funds. As to the first end. the idea was that 
there must be a body specially devoted to awakening the 
missionary spirit in the church. The missionary spirit 
was not to be the healthful action of the church's life, but 
something substituted for it, something worked up in the 
bosom of the church by special influences. But the other 
end to be gained was the increase of funds. This was 
sought to be attained by the sale of these distinctions. 
Sir. it- has been my lot to have part in many earnest de- 
bates in the church courts, and I do not know that I was 
ever yet betrayed into saying an unkind word of any man 
in the church, or of any institution in the church I was 
called on to oppose. But. sir. every instinct of my na- 
ture, and every holy impulse implanted within me by 
the Spirit of God. rises up with indignation and horror 
against this principle that men may buy places of honor 
and trust in this free, glorious commonwealth of Jesus 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



373 



Christ. I do revolt against this paid membership, this 
entitling of men for money to become consulting members 
of the church or of her boards — which they tell us are the 
same thing — this selling distinctions and honors in the 
church of Christ for filthy lucre, when nothing is plainer 
than that the love of Christ should form the only motive 
of all our contributions. Whatever shall be the result of 
this discussion, Moderator, were it in my power, I Avould 
at least expunge, and, utterly and forever, blot out this 
organic feature of our present system, as I hope God will 
wash out the sin and shame of it in the blood of his dear 
Son. And I predict that the time is not far off, when 
the church shall, with a whip of small cords, drive out all 
the buyers and sellers from our temple. 

"Such is the scheme of the boards as established in the 
Presbyterian Church. It is a complete system. It is a 
church by men, instead of a church by God. Moderator, 
I have confidence in the men who control our boards, and, 
whilst in their hands we may escape the more serious evils 
which we dread, in worse hands all the evils which we 
have pointed out would grow worse. The egg of the ser- 
pent is harmless, but it contains a serpent. The boards 
may be harmless now, but they contain a principle 
fraught with mischief in the day of trial. 

"My argument is finished, but I must notice objections. 
First, our brethren say we must not have innovations. 
Sir, we only propose a return to Bible principles and 
Bible practice. Our doctrine is as old as the Xew Testa- 
ment, our plan as old as the Acts of the Apostles. More- 
over, the Assembly has of late virtually decided that our 
principles are the true development of its life. At the 
Xashville Assembly some of the ablest friends of board- 
advocated a new one for church extension, but the idea of 
a simple committee, though feebly advocated,* prevailed. 
Thus the Assembly took one step towards what we pro- 
pose. 

"Secondly, it is urged, "Let well enough alone.' Oh ! 
sir, is it well enough \ What do brethren mean \ I am no 

* The "feeble advocacy.'" as Dr. Thornwell modestly put it. was his 
own. "Some of the ablest friends of boards" were Drs. Plumer and 
Boardman. 



MY LIFE AND TIMES 



accuser. I do not blame the boards. They have done 
what they could with this stiff and cumbrous organization. 
But have they done well enough ( Can any man say that 
this great church, in any department of its work, is do- 
ing well enough \ Oh ! sir, when I think of eight hundred 
perishing millions abroad, and of the moral wastes of our 
own country, when I look at the power of the gospel and 
the Master's blood to redeem and save, and then think 
how little progress has been made, I cannot say, 'Let well 
enough alone.' I must put it to my brethren, is it well 
enough \ I must urge this church to inquire if she be not 
neglecting some power God has given her. She is capa- 
ble of far higher and more glorious things, and I want her 
to put forth her own living hand directly to this work." 

Thus Dr. Thornwell ended with a thrilling appeal, such 
as few men can equal, that held the Assembly and the 
thronged galleries in breathless attention, while he sum- 
moned the sacramental host of God's elect to rise and 
march, and take the world for Jesus, closing with amen 
and amen ! 

In reply, Dr. Hodge complimented the eloquence of 
Dr. Thornwell, but professed his own inability to see the 
distinction drawn between a board and an executive com- 
mittee. Dr. Thornwell thought the difference radical. 
Tor himself, Dr. Hodge said, snapping the thumb and 
forefinger of his right hand together. I do not think it 
worth that. "We cannot receive, and our church has 
never held, the High Church doctrines about organiza- 
tion, for which the brethren contend. The Spirit of God, 
dwelling in the church and guiding her by his word and 
providence, must shape her efforts and her agencies, so 
that, under the dispensation of the Spirit, far more is 
left to the discretion of the church than under the old 
economy. But now we are called upon to believe that a 
certain form of church government and order, in all its 
details and with all its appliances for the evangelical 
work, is revealed in the word, and that we are as much 
bound to receive this form as to receive the articles of 
faith, that order is as much a matter of revelation as faith. 
TTe cannot do it. and we will not do it. The burden was 
too heavy for our fathers, and we cannot bear it." 



THE CONTROVERSIES OE MY TIMES. 



375 



Continuing, Dr. Hodge described, at some length, the 
struggle it had cost the church to get her work of dissem- 
inating the gospel at home and abroad, out of the hands of 
the voluntary societies, so as to entrust it to a board of her 
own creation and control. "'Thus, and from this quarter, 
did opposition to our boards first arise : now it comes 
from an opposite quarter. Then the opposition came from 
Congregationalism. Xow it comes, and I say it with 
great respect for my Brother Thornwell, from hyper- 
hyper-hyper High Church Presbyterianism. Then we 
were told that all power is from the people ; now. that all 
power is lodged in the clergy, that presbyters are all of 
one order, all pastors, all teachers, all rulers : then it was 
the distribution of power ; now of centralization. 

"But let us now look at this new theory of church 
authority. I understand it to be: 1. That Christ has or- 
dained a system of church government, not in general 
principles, but in all its details, and that we have no more 
right to create a new office than a new doctrine, or a new 
commandment of the Decalogue, unless we can show a 
'thus saith the Lord' for it. 2. That power inheres in 
the church, and cannot be delegated, any more than pray- 
ing or giving alms can be done by proxy. And. 3, That 
all power is joint, as opposed to several. These are the 
green withes by which it is proposed to bind the limbs of 
our church : or rather, this is the Delilah, who is to cut 
the locks of our Samson, and send him, shorn of his 
strength, to be the sport of the Philistines. Xow. sir. our 
church never did receive this yoke, and she will not receive 
it. We believe that all the attributes of the church belong- 
to the Holy Ghost. He is to be her guide by his word and 
providence, and. under the general principles of the word, 
ministers, elders, and people are to do the work of the 
church, according to their best judgment. She has dis- 
cretion, sir. she cannot be bound. 

"In opposition to this theory. I have been taught by 
lips now silent in the grave, but vocal in the General As- 
sembly on high, and I will never forget it. nor cease to de- 
fend it while life and being last, that all the attributes and 
prerogatives of power in the church arise from the in- 
dwelling of the Spirit, and where he dwells there is the 



376 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



church, with authority to do its own work in the best 
way ; and, as he does not dwell in the clergy exclusively, 
therefore, the power is not confined to the clergy ; but the 
church may, in her discretion, adopt such modes or 
agencies to carry out the commands of Christ as she deems 
best. She must be free. She must breathe. The power 
of the church is where the Holy Ghost is ; but in exter- 
nals he has given her discretion. I glory, as much as does 
my Brother Thornwell, in the principles of Presbyterian- 
ism, but one of those principles, and a most important one, 
is freedom in that which the Bible leaves to the discretion 
of Christ's people. We must not forget our great dis- 
tinctive principles : First, the parity of the clergy ; sec- 
ondly, the representative element, the right of the people 
to take part, by suffrage, in the government of the church, 
and, indeed, that originally the power is deposited with 
the people ; and, thirdly, the unity of the church, that all 
its members are parts of one great whole, and that all must 
suffer and labor and rejoice together. And these are not 
compatible with the new theory. But, above all, the 
theory is utterly unscriptural. Let any man open the 
New Testament, and say if our Form of Government is 
there as our faith is there ! No, sir, this is making the 
scaffolding to hide the building; it is making the body 
the same in value as the soul. I cannot see how any man 
can say that all the details of our system are in the Bible. 
The Jewish system, in all its details, was not in the Old 
Testament. Their yoke was not so heavy as that which 
these brethren would bind on our necks ; and it is pre- 
posterous to expect that so heavy a yoke can be received 
by those whom Christ has made free. This is too great 
a burden ; the church cannot receive it, and we will not 
receive it. Our Christian liberty is not thus to be put in 
trammels. The shackles are worse than Jewish that they 
would put on our feet, and then tell us to go over hill and 
dale, and preach the gospel to every creature. No, I do 
not find their system in the Bible, but I find just the 
opposite. Where are our apostles and prophets ? Sup- 
pose, Moderator, that Paul, inspired by God as an apostle, 
sat in your seat ! AVhat would he care for our Book of 
Discipline, or our Form of Government? Who would 



THE COXTEOVEESIES OF MY TIMES. 



want him to care for them ? He would ordain whom he 
pleased, depose whom he pleased, deliver to Satan whom 
he pleased. He would decide everything by the authority 
that he exercised as Christ s plenipotentiary. He would 
wait for no decisions of Assemblies. 

-But this burden to the eonseienee — to it I will not sub- 
mit. I will not be bound to a form of organism as I am 
to the faith of the gospel. I will not submit my con- 
science to the inferences, even of Dr. Thornwell. And 
yet this whole theory, which we are called upon to receive 
as of faith, is a matter of inference. I will not submit to 
anything as binding on my conscience that does not come 
from God's own lips. The Presbyterian Church will 
never submit as long as there is one drop of blood of her 
fathers in the veins of her children, to this superlatively 
High-Church order. Will yon have deaconesses because 
the apostles had them i 

"And. finally, this theory is suicidal. How are you to 
have schools and colleges and theological seminaries if 
you must have a divine warrant for them all ■ You must 
abolish all agencies, recall your missionaries, go yourself 
and do the work of an evangelist. How are you to have 
a hoard of directors for a seminary, or even a president 
of such a board ' How are the brethren able to serve 
under such boards in their seminaries ■ Can you rind any 
warrant for them in this Bible ■ Dr. Thornwell may get 
it out by an inference, but I cannot find it there. And. 
when he said that the Church Extension Committee is the 
model of what he wants. I felt as if a soaring ansel had 
fallen down to earth. 

"If these principles of Dr. Thornwell'? kill the boards, 
they will kill the committees, which our brethren would 
substitute for the boards. In fact, it is a mere question 
of arithmetic — a board or a committee : one hundred men 
or twenty men. And a commission amounts to the same 
thing. A commission and a committee ! Where the dif- 
ference, in the word or the thins: \ Xo. no \ this doctrine, 
carried out. instead of making the church more efficient, 
will bring her efforts to a dead halt. 

"The conscientiousness, of which Dr. Thornwell so 
feelingly speaks cannot be so serious a thins: after all. 



378 



MY LIFE A~NV TIMES. 



as my brother would make it. It is a long time since he 
began to advocate this theory, and to make its adoption a 
matter of conscience. Our brethren must have done vio- 
lence to their consciences for a long time, for they still 
work with our boards, and cooperate under a system which 
does such violence to their consciences. 

"But there is another ground of appeal of our brethren 
that ought to be noticed. They understand us to say that 
there is but a small difference between a board and a com- 
mittee. If it is so small a matter, ask they, why cannot 
you give it up ? We cannot give it up without casting re- 
proach upon all that have gone before us ; we cannot give 
it up without abandoning the past, We cannot give it up 
without yielding to pretensions that we believe to be un- 
authorized by scripture. We cannot give it up without 
sacrificing our Christian liberty ! And we will not give it 
up. The church has freedom of discretion in selecting 
the modes of her operation ; and to sacrifice this freedom 
to the claims of a high jure divino churchism, which we 
do not believe to be scriptural, we cannot and will not 
consent." 

In a rejoinder to Dr. Hodge's remarks, Dr. Thornwell 
said, "If my illustrious brother from Princeton had writ- 
ten out a speech to deliver before the Assembly in opposi- 
tion to my views, he could not possibly have written one 
which it would better suit me to answer than the one de- 
livered here on Saturday. He accepts the issues which 
are the true issues in this case, and has set before us the 
type of Presbyterianism of which the boards may be 
regarded as the natural development. There is a little 
preliminary skirmishing, which it may be necessary to 
notice before coming to the main issue, and to that let us 
first attend. 

"Dr. Hodge has concluded, from my principles, that I 
make the clergy the church. I am amazed at the charge, 
but still more amazed at the logic which sustains it, 

"Again, my brother has said that my principles are 
hyper-hyper-hyper High Presbyterianism, and I must re- 
tort that his principles are no, no, no Presbyterianism; 
no, no, no churchism. His speech, sir, presented us with 
a little touch of democracy, a little touch of prelacy, and 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



379 



a considerable slice of Quakerism, but no Presbyterian- 
ism. Surely, sir, Dr. Hodge's statement, that the church 
is found wherever the Holy Ghost is, cannot be taken 
without much qualification. Does not the Holy Ghost 
often dwell in the heart of the solitary individual ? But 
the church is an organism, uniting many individuals into 
one body. 

"Again, the good brother appeals to authority for sanc- 
tion to his views of boards. We can appeal to fathers too. 
There have been martyrs who laid down their lives rather 
than deny the divine right of presbytery. The great 
author of the Second Book of Discipline, and many others 
of the glorious men of Scotland, held the views we now 
maintain. And we have living authorities, too — among 
whom is one who has no superior and few equals in either 
hemisphere — the great author of the Act and Testimony, 
the document that separated this church from error, to 
whom all Presbyterians are, therefore, under everlasting 
obligations. But, Moderator, this question is not to be 
settled by human authority, but by the word of God. 

"Again, my brother twits me with supporting the 
boards while professing to be conscientiously opposed to 
the principles of their constitution. Would he have us 
to be factious ? Moderator, I never have said to my 
brethren, to whom I promised submission in the Lord, 
'I cannot submit, I will not submit.' I will submit to 
my brethren, even where I think they are mistaken, if the 
submission be not sinful. 

"The good brother complains that we wish to lay a 
heavier yoke than the Jewish upon his neck. The burden 
we want to impose is more grievous than he can bear ; he 
must have liberty. Well, sir, what Ave bring him is, first, 
God's authority, and, secondly, God's guidance; and 
these constitute our notion of perfect freedom. 

"The idea of the brother, that if Paul were here he 
would pay no regard to this church court, but act inde- 
pendently of it, upon his own authority, filled me with 
astonishment. Paul surelv would not despise order nor 
contemn the authority which his divine Master has left in 
his church. Sir, we claim to be a true apostolic church. 
Paul is here. All the apostles are here. We have the 



380 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



very principles they inculcated, and the very order they 
inaugurated — and would Paul contemn these \ 

"But I made the good brother's remarks the occasion of 
consulting Paul on this very question before us, and I 
have his answer. He declares (Ephesians iv. 11) that the 
Lord, as his ascension gifts, 'gave some apostles, and some 
prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and 
teachers/ and that 'God has set' these in his church, and 
'ap23ointed helps and governments' for it. 

"But let us now pass to the main issue : the Presbyte- 
rianism of my brother from Princeton, and that which 
we hold to be the Presbyterianism of the Bible and of 
our constitution. The good brother, in his account of 
church government, has not signalized one principal ele- 
ment of this Presbyterianism. He named (1) the parity 
of the clergy. Why, sir, this is not a distinctive feature 
of Presbyterian church government. All the evangelical 
sects, except the Episcopal, hold to that. (2) He named 
the authority of the people. Why, sir, that also is not dis- 
tinctive of Presbyterianism. The Congregationalists 
hold that in intenser degree than we do. (3) The Doctor 
mentioned the unity of the church. And is that pe- 
culiar to us ? Why, Pome holds that with a vehemence 
we do not put forth ! Such are the three points signal- 
ized by the brother as the main points of our system. 
Look at them, and see what they compose. Is that Pres- 
byterianism — a little of everything, but nothing distinc- 
tive? 

"Sir, the principles which really distinguish us from 
other evangelical churches are : 

"1. The principle of representative government — of 
government by parliamentary courts, composed of pres- 
byters duly appointed and ordained. A single congrega- 
tion is governed by the parochial presbytery; several 
associated congregations by the classical presbytery ; the 
whole church, by a presbytery of representative presby- 
ters from all its bounds. This is the first element that 
distinguishes us from Congregationalists and from pre- 
latists — government not by individual rulers, but assem- 
blies of presbyters. Do we ignore the people, then ? Far 
from it ; the people are there representatively ; they are 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



381 



there as presbyters, all of them alike being men whom 
they have chosen to represent them. 

"2. The members of these representative assemblies 
must be of two classes, belonging to the one order of pres- 
byters. All of them belong to the one order of rulers, and 
only as rulers, chosen rulers, or representatives of the 
people, can they appear in these courts. But they are of 
two classes, viz., (1) presbyters who only rule, and (2) 
presbyters who rule and also labor in the word and doc- 
trine. This gives us the second element of our repre- 
sentative government, and answers to the two houses 
which are found to be so excellent a help to wise and safe 
legislation. 

"Presbyterians, therefore, hold to the parity of the 
eldership, not only, as Dr. Hodge seems to think, to the 
parity of the 'clergy' (that is, of the teaching elders, or 
ministers), but also to the parity of all presbyters, as 
presbyters or rulers of the Lord's house. I take my 
brother, the ruling elder, when I meet him in any church 
court, by the hand as my brother and my peer. As pres- 
byters, as members of any presbytery, from the lowest to 
the highest, we are all perfectly equal in authority, al- 
though some of us have another function or office, being 
ordained to labor also in the word and doctrine. I may 
here refer to an article in the last number of the Prince- 
ton Review, which goes to abolish and overthrow, alto- 
gether, the office of the ruling elder, and this Presbyterian 
doctrine of the parity of all presbyters. 

"3. A third distinctive feature of Presbyterian church 
government is the way in which it realizes the unity of 
the church. It realizes this idea by the elasticity of its 
parliamentary representative system. If there were but 
one congregation on earth, its session would be the parlia- 
ment of the whole church ; if half a dozen, the representa- 
tives from each would constitute a parliament for the 
whole church ; if a still larger number, the same results 
would follow. So representatives from all the churches 
(or from the smaller parliaments, which is the same prin- 
ciple) constitute the parliament for the whole church. 

"'Only two churches on the earth realize this idea of 
church unity — Rome and our own church. But these are 



382 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



the poles apart as to the system by which they realize it. 
Rome, with her infallible pope at the head, and with 
graded authorities extending over the whole earth, one 
class subservient to another, and all to the pope, secures a 
terrible unity, binding all abjectly to a single throne. 
Our system, on the other hand, secures unity in consis- 
tency with the most perfect freedom. 

"Now, look, brethren, at the Presbyterianism advo- 
cated by the brother from Princeton, and then at that 
which I have feebly attempted to portray ; 'look first on 
this picture, and then look on that,' and say which of them 
is the Presbyterianism of the Bible, which is your Presby- 
terianism. 

"I will refer to one more point, the power of the repre- 
sentative assemblies of rulers. It is simply 'ministerial 
and declarative.' They cannot make laws for God's peo- 
ple ; they only declare and administer the revealed laws 
of the Lord's house. They have a certain commission 
entrusted to them, and no power beyond what is necessary 
to execute that commission. Now, in the organization of 
our boards, there is allowed a power beyond what the 
church is authorized to put forth. There is constituted a 
society, separate from the church, for church purposes. 
The board is a missionary society beyond the church, out- 
side of the church, a distinct organism, and our executive 
committee is the hand of this society, not the hand of the 
church. The board is not the executive agent of the As- 
sembly. It is, in fact, not an executive agency at all. 
The executive committee is the hand of the board, and the 
board stands off as a missionary society, and to it the ex- 
ecutive committee reports. Instead of creating a hand, 
and an executive agency of the Assembly, we created a 
society, in imitation of the American Board of Foreign 
Missions, or the American Home Missionary Society, and 
transferred to it the work of missions. The board is not 
expected to do anything but appoint the executive com- 
mittee, and receive its report, adopt it, and then report 
to the Assembly. Now, by a true construction of our 
system, the General Assembly is the board of domestic 
missions. The executive committee ought to be the hand 
of the Assembly, and directly responsible to it. But this 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



383 



is not the case. Another organization, a society whose 
members are not identical with the members of the 
church, and whose officers are not chnrch officers, is inter- 
posed between the executive agency and the Assembly, 
which ought to control. What, then, do you need ? To 
abolish the board, and have the General Assembly act as 
the board of missions for the church, or rather, the church 
act through the assembly. I care not for the name ; let 
our executive agency be called a board or a committee, no 
matter. But, let it be the hand of the church to collect 
and disburse her benefactions and do her work. What 
has a board ever done ? You see from this year's report of 
the board it does nothing. Many of its members never 
attend. Many do not know they are members, and others 
do not care. Its meetings are mere matters of form. The 
board relies on the Assembly, and the Assembly relies on 
the board, and supervision is defeated. 

"When you lay down the proposition that the church is 
the missionary agency, you make every church member a 
member, and lay upon him the responsibility of doing his 
duty. Under our present organization, we know that is 
not felt. 

"Moderator, I have now discharged, according to my 
ability, a solemn public duty. I have stood up for prin- 
ciples that I solemnly believe to be fundamental in our 
system, and of incalculable importance to the welfare and 
advancement of our glorious cause. I love the whole 
catholic church ; but I love the Presbyterian Church with 
a fervor and a devotion which I cannot utter, and I do de- 
sire to see her put in that position that I believe she must 
occupy, in order to the accomplishment of her mission in 
pouring the blessings of peace and salvation upon our 
whole land, and upon the nations. I want the church to 
come up to this mission in her own proper organization, 
with her own officers, and in her own power, executing 
her commissions herself, without delegating to any out- 
side organism those functions and duties to perform, 
which is her highest glory. When they ask the people to 
contribute, let her ministers speak, not in the name of this 
board or that board, but in the name of Zion and her glori- 
ous king. Let them ever press the idea that it is not the 



384 



MY LIFE AX T) TIMES. 



cause of a board of human creation, but of the blood- 
bought church and her exalted Head." 

Subsequently, Dr. Hodge said that he rose reluctantly. 
He rose rather in obedience to the wishes of friends and 
brethren, than by the impulse of his own mind ; but it 
was, perhaps, due to himself and his position to say a 
word or two. On Saturday last, in what he said, there 
occurred three sentences, which Dr. Thornwell had held 
up sometimes in a ludicrous, sometimes in a portentous 
light, and out of them had constructed and attributed to 
him a theory of church government which he utterly re- 
pudiated. He held no such theory. If Dr. Thornwell's 
was the sentiment of this house, then he was unworthy to 
hold, at the hands of this Assembly, the place in which 
he had labored for almost forty years. "Permit me, Mr. 
Moderator, to state, in very few words, what my theory of 
Presbyterianisin is. It involves the following principles : 

"1. That all the attributes and prerogatives of the 
church of God on earth are derived from the indwelling 
of the Holy Spirit. 

"2. Consequently, that the prerogatives of the church 
belong, in the first instance, in sensu primo, to the people, 
and not exclusively to the clergy. This is the great dis- 
tinctive principle of Protestantism. 

u 3. That these prerogatives are to be exercised, through 
the organs, and, according to the rules, prescribed in the 
word of God. 

kk 4. That the Holy Spirit, dwelling in all the children 
of God, making them one body in Christ -Jesus, distributes 
gifts to each one severally as he wills. To one he gives 
the gifts of an apostle, to another those of a prophet, to 
another those of a teacher, to another those of ruling, etc. 

"5. That of these organs or officers of the apostolic 
church, some were intended to be permanent, others tem- 
porary. The criteria for discriminating between the per- 
manent and temporary offices are : ( 1 ) The nature of the 
gifts involved in them. It was plenary revelation and 
inspiration which constituted an apostle. If that gift has 
ceased, the office has ceased. It was occasional inspira- 
tion which constituted a prophet ; if that gift is no longer 



THE CONTROVERSIES OE ZSIT TIMES. 



385 



granted, we have no longer a class of living prophets. (2) 
When there is an express command that a given office 
should be continued ; or ( 3 ) When the qualifications, 
which are to be required in candidates for the office, are 
prescribed, then the office is permanent. (4) And, finally, 
when it can be proved, historically, that an office has, in 
fact, been continued from the apostolic through all suc- 
ceeding ages. 

"6. That the officers, thus ascertained to be permanent, 
are ministers of the word, ruling elders, and deacons. 

"7. That, as there is no class of officers above the pres- 
byters, no gifts higher than those which constitute a 
minister of the word, presbyters are the highest perma- 
nent officers of the church, and stand all on the same level ; 
all have the same office and the same prerogatives. This 
is the parity of the clergy. There are no apostles, no 
prophets, and, of course, no prelates. 

"8. That the right of the people, to take part in the 
government of the church, is exercised through their rep- 
resentatives, the ruling elders. Here is the principle of 
representation, and here is the foundation of the peculiar 
character of our church courts. They are composed of 
two elements, a lay and clerical, ministers and elders. 
This representation of the people is, first, in the session, 
then in the presbytery, then in the synod, and then in 
the General Assembly. In all, the elders have the same 
right with the ministers to participate in the exercise of 
all the powers of the church — executive, legislative, and 
judicial. They are in our courts, not by courtesy, not by 
human ordinance, but by divine right. 

"9. That, as the Spirit of God, dwelling in all believers, 
makes them one body; as the command to obey our 
brethren in the Lord is not limited to those brethren who 
may belong to the same congregation with ourselves ; as it 
is not founded on mere proximity, nor on any mutual cov- 
enant, but on the fact that they are our brethren, in whom 
the Spirit dwells, therefore, the church is one ; therefore, 
a smaller part is subject to a larger, a larger to the whole, 
a session to the presbytery, a presbytery to the synod, and 
the synods to the General Assembly. 

k, This is my Presbyterianism. I am not ashamed of it. 



386 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



I am willing to avow it here and elsewhere, and stand or 
fall by it." 

Such was the great debate at Rochester, X. Y., on the 
board question, between the respective representatives of 
what was soon to become the Xorthern Presbyterian 
Church and the Southern Presbyterian Church. The 
question debated was in this form : "Resolved, That it is 
inexpedient to make any organic change in the organiza- 
tion of the Board of Domestic Missions." It is always 
an awkward thing to debate a negative proposition, and so 
it is always both awkward and confusing to vote upon a 
resolution that is at once negative and equivocal. Never- 
theless, the majority of the Assembly preferred that form 
of the question, and the minority yielded to them this 
great advantage. So the vote stood, yeas, 234; nays, 56. 
But this vote did not fairly exhibit the real state of 
opinion in the Assembly, which is sufficiently proved by 
the subsequent action of the body in resolutions adopted 
in order to conform the boards to the views and wishes of 
the minority. 

The first of these required every member of the board 
to be made aware of his membership by a formal letter 
from the secretary, and also to be informed of the times 
of the regular meetings of the board ; and also, when a 
special meeting was required, of the date and business of 
the proposed meeting. 

The second required every board to send up to the As- 
sembly, with its annual report, its own book of minutes, 
and also the minutes of its executive committee's meetings 
for the examination of the Assembly. 

The third made it unlawful to issue honorary member- 
ships for money. 

The fourth refused, by a large majority, to appoint any 
travelling secretary. 

Besides these resolutions, which were adopted by the 
Assembly, there was a motion, by the Hon. Judge Lord, 
of Oswego, to reduce the number of the board one-half, 
namely, from ninety-six to forty-eight members, but, on 
the plea that many members of the Assembly had already 
departed, the dissolution of the body being so near at 
hand, this motion was laid on the table. 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



387 



Let it also be observed that after the war, the Old and 
Xew School Assemblies were reunited at the North, and 
that, upon this event, there was a total revolution of the 
board system, and, while the name of board was retained, 
it came to be the very executive committee of some twelve 
or fifteen members, for which the minority had con- 
tended. 

Finally, Dr. Hodge, evidently much dissatisfied with 
the efficiency of his argument at Rochester, notwithstand- 
ing he was sustained by the majority, went home and re- 
newed the discussion in written form in the pages of the 
Princeton Review. Dr. Thornwell, immediately after 
the Assembly, had gone to Europe for the summer. On 
his return, finding that Dr. Hodge had reopened the de- 
bate through the press, and being himself master both of 
written and spoken words, replied through the Southern 
Presbyterian Review of January, 1861. The reader will 
find Dr. Hodge's written argument in the fourth volume 
of ThornwelVs Collected Writings, where we have also 
given place to Dr. Smyth's defence of church boards. 

The Elder Controversy. 

If the board controversy was a sort of remainder from 
the original controversy between the Old and the E~ew 
School Presbyterians, so also did the elder controversy 
necessarily follow that about the boards. This subject of 
the ruling elder first came before the Assembly of 1842, 
I know not how, and was passed over as unfinished busi- 
ness to the next. The Assembly of 1843 took up this un- 
finished business, but the discussion which followed 
evinced great confusion in the minds of the speakers gen- 
erally on both sides. It was finally resolved that "any 
three ministers constitute a legal quorum of a presbytery 
without the presence of any ruling elder," and also "that 
ruling elders may not join with ministers in the ordina- 
tion of a minister." Respecting this decision of the As- 
sembly, Breckinridge writes to his friend, Thornwell, in 
July, 1843, expressing his "distress and mortification at 
the result of the matter about ruling elders, in the last 
Assembly." He says, "I knew the church was not ready 
for the question ; but I had no conception of the extent 



388 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



of its ignorance and false principles. I had no hand in 
bringing on the question there, none in bringing it up ; 
and desired its discussion put off. Last year (1842), 
when I was in the Assembly, they put it off, rather than 
hear me on it; this year they would not hear of delay." 
But in the fall of 1843, he delivered before the Synod of 
Philadelphia, in Baltimore, two masterly arguments on 
the two points, so unhappily decided by the previous As- 
sembly. These great speeches were, of course, thoroughly 
prepared beforehand, but they were speeches indeed, not 
written out and memorized. In a letter to his friend, of 
date November 27th, he says, "I have been very busy for 
the last two weeks, in all odd times, writing out my argu- 
ment, delivered before our Synod, on the quorum of a 
•presbytery; and am about to write out that on the ques- 
tion of ordination." He adds, "I have written them out 
at the request of the large majority of the ruling elders 
of this city (Baltimore). I consider the whole question 
of church order involved in the two propositions, and treat 
them accordingly ; for if jurisdiction or ordination be in 
the hands of preachers, as preachers, there is an end of 
Presbyterianism." These arguments subsequently ap- 
peared in The Presbyterian, a paper published in Phila- 
delphia, and a very large edition was put forth in pam- 
phlet form, with the significant title, "Presbyterian Gov- 
ernment not a Hierarchy, but a Commonwealth, and Pres- 
byterian Ordination not a Charm, but an Act of Govern- 
ment." They are not now accessible to students of this 
subject — would that they were ! But Dr. Thorn well's re- 
view of them in the Southern Presbyterian Review, Vol. 

makes frequent quotations, and will give any reader 
an idea of their value, and this review may be found in 
the fourth volume of ThornwelVs Collected Writings. 
Thus it came to pass that, as Dr. Thornwell first brought 
on the controversy about boards at Augusta, in 1840, so 
it may be properly stated that his eminent friend made, 
by these two arguments, the real beginning of the con- 
troversy on the ruling eldership question. 

Dr. Breckinridge considers the whole question of 
church order involved in his two propositions. Dr. 
Palmer says, a They go to the very core of our Presby- 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



389 



terian system;" and the discussion upon them was far 
more earnest and long continued than that previously 
maintained on the subject of boards. It has resulted, so 
far as the Southern Presbyterian Church is concerned, in 
the complete establishment of sound scriptural views re- 
specting the matter. 

These speeches of Dr. Breckinridge are not before me, 
and they are, in fact, out of print ; but I remember well, 
having carefully studied them, how elaborate, instructive, 
satisfactory, as well as eloquent, they are. But they oc- 
cupy many pages, and Dr. Thornwell's review of them 
extends through seventy more. I make no attempt to 
present to the reader in full the contents of this very 
learned and luminous review. I endeavor only a very 
brief account of the way in which he presents the argu- 
ment of his friend, and then proceeds to add thereto' some- 
what fully his own views of the subject. "The General 
Assembly decided that three ministers of any presbytery 
will constitute its quorum* ; Dr. Breckinridge maintains 
that no court of the Presbyterian Church can be regularly, 
legally, or completely constituted without the presence 
of ruling elders as members thereof. The question is not 
as to the essential being of a presbytery, but as to its 
regularity, legality, and completeness. Ministers prop- 
erly ordained are presbyters ; a presbytery is a college of 
presbyters ; therefore, a presbytery, in extraordinary cir- 
cumstances, may be composed exclusively of ministers. 
On the same principle, as ruling elders, according to the 
scriptures, are presbyters, and, as a presbytery is nothing 
but a college of presbyters, it is equally obvious that a 

* "Quorum," says Bouvier, in his law dictionary, "used substan- 
tively, signifies the number of persons belonging to a legislative 
assembly, a corporation, society or other body, required to transact 
business." The word is strictly Latin, the genitive plural of a pro- 
noun, and came into use as a common noun in our language from a 
clause in the second branch of the Commission of the Peace accus- 
tomed to be issued by the crown of England, in which the powers of 
justices, when assembled in sessions, are created and defined. The 
clause in question begins, "We have also assigned to you, and every 
two or more of you, of ivhom (quorum) any one of you, the afore- 
said A, B, C, D, etc., we will shall be one," etc. 



390 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



true presbytery, in extraordinary circumstances, may be 
composed exclusively of ruling elders. In an unsettled or 
formative condition of the church, presbyterial acts may, 
from the necessity of the case, be performed by courts de- 
fective in one or other of their constitutional elements. 
And yet these acts need not be despised as invalid. For 
four years after its formation, the first presbytery of the 
Secession Church of Scotland, the presbytery of Erskine, 
Fisher, MoncriefF, and Wilson, consisted only of these 
four ministers. But, to affirm that because a court con- 
sisted exclusively of ministers, may, in extraordinary cir- 
cumstances, be acknowledged a valid presbytery, there- 
fore, in a settled church state, such a court is to be treated 
as legitimate and proper, carries with it no force that 
cannot be applied equally well to the case of a body of 
ruling elders without the presence of a teaching elder. 

"The real point in dispute, therefore, is whether, in a 
settled church state, or under the operation of our own 
system, a classical or synodical assembly can ever be legit- 
imately constituted without the presence of ruling elders. 
This question may appear to be very minute, but, as Dr. 
Breckinridge observes, the ultimate principle involved is 
one of the most important and comprehensive that could 
be submitted to the people of God. It is the question 
whether the final power and actual authority are in the 
hands of preachers as such, or of the body of the Chris- 
tian people to be exercised through officers regularly 
elected by them. This is, indeed, a question whose fear- 
ful scope is manifest upon every page of the history of 
Christianity." 

Dr. Thornwell's first argument against the decision of 
the Assembly is that "it contradicts the whole analogy 
of Presbyterian polity. That polity constitutes our 
church a commonwealth. But the full force of this state- 
ment is generally misapprehended." Dr. Thorn well re- 
fers to the noble panegyric that Milton pronounces upon 
a free commonwealth as "the noblest, the manliest, the 
equalest, the justest government, the most agreeable to 
all due liberty and proportionate equality," etc. But he 
proceeds to pronounce the scheme of Milton as grossly de- 
fective, in that the highest council of his republic was to 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



391 



be a permanent assembly. Thornwell explains how that 
great man came to make this blunder, "but, while Mil- 
ton's mode of applying the principle of representation is 
to be condemned, he clearly perceived upon what its pe- 
culiar value depends. Its excellence consists in the prob- 
ability it furnishes that reason only shall sway. The 
danger of democracy is from the passions and the igno- 
rance of the people ; the danger of monarchy from the 
caprices, the tyranny, and the ambition of the king ; and 
the danger of an oligarchy, from the selfishness incident 
to privileged orders. Reason, whose voice is the will of 
God, is much more likely to prevail in a deliberative as- 
sembly constituted of the real representatives of the peo- 
ple. It is a great mistake to suppose that the end of gov- 
ernment is to accomplish the will of the people. The 
state is a divine ordinance, a social institute founded on 
the principle of justice. It has great moral purposes to 
subserve. The will of the people should be done only 
when the people will what is right. The representative 
principle is a check upon their power, an expedient to re- 
strain what would otherwise be an intolerable despotism. 
There is no misapprehension more dangerous than that 
which confounds representative government with the 
essential principle of a pure democracy. It is not because 
the whole people cannot meet, but because they ought not 
to meet, that the representative council, in modern times, 
is preferred to the ancient convocations in the forum or 
the market-place. Power has a natural tendency to 
settle into despotism; and the legitimate ends of the 
state may be as completely defeated by the absolute power 
of the people as by the absolute power of a single ruler. 
Absolute power is tyranny, whether in the hands of large 
masses, of privileged orders, or of single individuals." 

Dr. Thornwell next points out two conditions which 
must belong to the full and proper use of the representa- 
tive system: the representative must have an accurate 
knowledge of the people's circumstances and wants, and 
he must also have a fixed purpose to aim at the collective 
interests of the whole body. To this end the election of 
representatives is to be entrusted to small communities ; 
and each representative is not to be simply the organ of a 



392 MY LIFE AND TIMES. 

narrow section, bnt the representative of all sections col- 
lectively. There must also he checks imposed on these 
assemblies themselves. Accordingly, the freest modern 
States have adopted the principle of two chambers, be- 
longing to different classes. This is a vast improvement 
upon the single council of Milton. It is, perhaps, as 
great an improvement upon the representative principle 
as the representative principle itself was upon that of 
deputies in the Middle Ages. Xow, the description which 
has just been given of a commonwealth in the state is an 
exact picture, in its essential features, of Presbyterian 
government in the church. The very principles which 
\ the progress of modern society has developed, were found 
imbedded in the Presbyterian system ages before a truly 
representative republic existed upon earth. 

The first characteristic principle of our system is the 
government of the church by free representative assem- 
blies. This distinguishes us from prelacy on the one 
hand, and Independency on the other. Ours is a govern- 
ment, not by presbyters, but by presbyteries : and if we 
deny that such assemblies are essential to our system, we 
deny, at the same time, that our system is a common- 
wealth. 

In the next place. Dr. Thornwell proceeds to show how, 
in the composition of our assemblies, the principle of two 
chambers is introduced. This end is accomplished by two 
classes of representatives. The ministers are a check upon 
the elders, and the elders are a check upon the ministers. 
Moreover, our higher courts are a check upon the lower. 
A government, exclusively in the hands of ministers, is 
fraught with danger to them and to the people, against 
which all ecclesiastical history is a solemn warning. Such 
assemblies might give the church the form of a common- 
wealth, but the spirit of liberty would soon depart. The 
possession of power would produce its natural effects, the 
ministry would aspire to be a privileged class, and the 
people would soon lose all the significance and importance 
which our system attaches to them. On the other hand, 
a government exclusively in the hands of the elders, 
would lean too much to popular will. Identified com- 
pletely with their own people, they might be tempted to 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



393 



aim at local and sectional advantages, thus regarding 
themselves as mere deputies, instead of representatives. 
But, with our double representation, clerical despotism 
and popular passion are equally discouraged. We can- 
not, therefore, attach too much importance to the office 
of ruling elder in its relation to our church courts. Upon 
it the security of our liberties mainly depends ; it is 
the principal means, under God, of making the church, 
not only a commonwealth, but a free commonwealth, 
the "noblest, manliest, justest, equalest" government on 
earth. 

Then Dr. Thornwell makes plain that the Presbyte- 
rianism which the Assembly has sanctioned, is a maimed 
and partial thing — as different from that of our standards 
and the standards of all the Presbyterian Churches as a 
statue is different from a man. The form of a common- 
wealth may exist under it, and will continue to exist as 
long as the ministers are pastors, but the vitality is gone, 
the arteries of the body become withered and dried the 
very moment ruling elders, fresh from the people, with 
feelings, habits, and interests, which identify them with 
their constituents, are removed from our courts. 

"This, then," says Dr. Thornwell, "is our first argu- 
ment. The resolution of the Assembly contradicts the 
whole analogy of our government ; it mars the perfection 
of our representative system ; it removes one of its most 
important securities, and leaves the church in the hands 
of rulers who are least acquainted with the details of its 
interests, and strongly tempted in the absence of salutary 
checks, to pursue abstractions, or to exalt themselves into 
a privileged class. . . . When we consider the mul- 
titude of ministers without charge, the facility of in- 
creasing their number, and the lax discipline which 
permits them to exercise the full power of scriptural 
bishops, the danger seems to us more than imaginary, 
which threatens the balance of our system when elders 
are treated as comparatively unimportant. ... To 
dispense with elders in the assemblies of the church is to 
sever the cords which bind the hearts of our people to 
their government, and to prepare the way for converting 
a free, vigorous and healthful commonwealth into a sa- 



394 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES 



cred aristocracy. Perpetual vigilance is the price of 
liberty." 

There are other arguments, of striking force, with 
which Dr. Thornwell evinces how greatly the Assembly 
erred on the quorum question. But it is time to proceed 
to his review of Dr. Breckinridge's second speech. This 
concerns the right of ruling elders to lay on hands in 
the ordination of a minister, which the Assembly 
of 1843 denied. The Assembly of 1844 reaffirmed 
the decision of its predecessor, pronounced ordina- 
tion to be a " rite," and treated it simply as "a de- 
claratory ministerial act." The point in dispute, there- 
fore, involved the very nature of ordination. In the 
course of the controversy, two distinct issues had been pre- 
sented, namely, whether ordination is an act of the power 
of jurisdiction, and is therefore joint and not several, 
or whether it belongs to the power of order, and therefore 
to be performed only by those who have power to ordain 
a minister. It was generally conceded that ordination 
belongs to a court ; but, upon this supposition that it is 
an act of government, the question was, whether there be 
not something so peculiar in it that the only rulers who 
are competent to execute it are ministers themselves. 
Still it was felt that there was nothing analogous in it to 
preaching, nor to the administration of the sacraments, 
nor to any other function which pertained to ministers, 
in their individual relations, as preachers of the word. 
Then it became a question whether, supposing it be- 
longed to the court, still the administration of it ought 
not to be confined to those members of the court who pos- 
sessed the office to which the candidate was about to be set 
apart. This, as I interpret Dr. Thornwell's language, is 
about the form in which the subject was first apprehended 
by the General Assembly of 1843. 

There were two leading grounds on which the doctrine 
of the Assembly of 1843 was defended. First, that ordi- 
nation confers ministerial authority, is a sort of spiritual 
generation of spiritual teachers, and, therefore, can be 
bestowed only by those who already possess it, upon the 
obvious principle that a man cannot give to others what he 
has not himself. Secondly, that ordination pertains only 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



395 



to scriptural presbyters, and that, as ruling elders are not 
the presbyters of scripture, they have no right to unite 
with the presbytery in the performance of a strictly pres- 
byterial act. This seems to us to have been the state of 
the controversy when the Assembly of 1844 met. That 
Assembly made another issue, by denying that ordination 
is an act of government at all, by pronouncing it to be a 
rite, and by referring it to the category of order rather 
than jurisdiction. In every aspect of the case, the char- 
acteristic principles of our system were involved. It was 
certainly a matter of some moment to determine what 
ordination is. The consequence attached to it by pre- 
latists and papists, the bitter controversies it has occa- 
sioned in the church, and its obvious relations to the 
authority and duties of the ministry, required that we 
should at least be settled in our own views as to what 
constitutes its essence. Our church ought to have a defi- 
nite testimony; and yet their recent agitations had re- 
vealed the melancholy fact that, upon this whole subject, 
our language to each other, to other churches, and to the 
world, was as confused and contradictory as the dialects 
of Babel. It was also a matter of some moment that the 
office of ruling elder should be clearly apprehended. Was 
he a mere deputy of the people, clothed with delegated 
power, and only the organ of the constituents who elect 
him ? Or was he an officer, divinely appointed, clothed 
with jurisdiction by the authority of God, and elected by 
the people to discharge the duties which Christ had con- 
nected with his office ? Was he, or was he not, the presby- 
ter of the scriptures ? These surely were not slight ques- 
tions ; they affected the very heart of our system ; and, 
in deciding them, we settled the distinctive principles of 
our government. We are, therefore, required to say 
whether we believe, with the papists, that ordination is a 
sacrament ; with the prelatists, that it belongs to the 
power of order ; with the Independents, that it belongs to 
the people; or with the great body of the Keformed 
church, that it belongs to the power of jurisdiction, is an 
act of government, and must be administered by the legit- 
imate courts of God's house. We are required to say 
whether ruling elders are lawful members of ecclesiastical 



396 



MY LIFE AJNTD TIMES. 



courts, are the presbyters of scripture, or are mere in- 
truders into congregational, classical, and synodical as- 
semblies. We are required, in other words, to say whether 
we are Presbyterians or not. 

The points, which Dr. Breckinridge discusses in the 
speech before us, are, "that the whole work of the ordina- 
tion of ministers of the word belongs regularly and prop- 
erly to a presbytery composed of preaching and ruling 
elders ; and that the presbytery, which should impose 
hands, is the same as that which performs all the rest of 
the work of ordination." His doctrine, in other words, is 
that ordination is an act of government, and appropriately 
belongs to the rulers of God's house judicially convened, 
that it is the exercise of joint, and not of several power, 
and cannot be restricted to one class of elders more than 
to another. Every elder, who is a member of the court, 
whether he be a preacher or not, may participate in the 
execution of the act. 

"This speech, like the former," says Dr. Thornwell, 
"may be divided into three parts. The first presents 
what may be called the constitutional argument ; the 
second illustrates the propriety and fitness of the provis- 
ions of our standards, on which the constitutional argu- 
ment depends ; and the third is devoted to the doctrine of 
other churches, in reference to the point in dispute, as 
this doctrine is gathered from the authorized symbols of 
their faith. Any language which should at all be propor- 
tioned to our convictions of the ability with which these 
topics are discussed, would, to those who have never in- 
vestigated the subject, seem to be extravagant. 

Dr. Thornwell continues: "It seems to us that the op- 
position to Dr. Breckinridge's theory arises from a two- 
fold error ; the first having reference to the nature of 
ordination itself, and the second to the office of the ruling 
elder. What, then, is ordination ? 

"In the first place, the very term itself obviously im- 
plies, what every definition, whether Protestant or Papal, 
Prelatic, Presbyterian, or Congregational, assumes, as a 
conceded proposition, that the ministry of the gospel is 
an ordo. Ordination has evidently some relation to this 
ordo, and our views of this relation must depend upon 



THE COXTKOVEKSIES OF MY TIMES. 



397 



our previous conceptions of the source and nature of that, 
whatever it is, which constitutes the essence of the order. 

"According to Rome, three sacraments — baptism, con- 
firmation, and orders — impress an indelible character on 
the soul. This character, whatever it is, which the sac- 
rament of orders confers, constitutes the difference be- 
tween the clergy and the laity. There is a mark upon the 
souls of the one which is not found upon the souls of the 
other. Orders communicate the power as a personal and 
substantive possession, to distribute to others the blessings 
of the covenant. In correspondence with this view of 
the nature of the order, Rome teaches that ordination is 
a sacrament, and, as a sacrament, actually impresses the 
indelible character which distinguishes the priesthood. 
It is that which makes a man a priest, the only divine call- 
ing which can justify a creature in ministering at the 
altar. His ordination and his commission from above 
are one and the same thing. 

" According to the Church of England, Hooker, author 
of the Ecclesiastical Polity, being our authority, 'minis- 
terial power,' which he does not scruple to call a mark or 
a character, acknowledged to be indelible, 'is a mark of 
separation, because it severeth them that have it from 
other men, and maketh them a special order, consecrated 
unto the service of the Most High in things wherewith 
others may not meddle.' As in the church of Rome, so in 
this Protestant communion, ordination is the only valid 
commission which a man can legitimately plead to ad- 
minister the ordinances of God. 'Canonical ordination/ 
says Hooker, 'in the church of Christ, is that which makes 
a lawful minister.' The very words which the bishop 
employs at ordination are conclusive proof that ordina- 
tion is regarded as the real communication of a divine 
warrant to discharge the duties of a minister. It creates 
a right to the ordo. It impresses the character or bestows 
the power which is distinctive of the rank; so that the 
relation of ordination to the ordo, in the churches of 
England and Rome, is essentially the same. Their 
bishops undertake, in the name of God, to call and com- 
mission the ministry for its work. 

"But, according to our doctrine, and the doctrine of the 



398 



MY EIEE A~ND TIMES. 



great body of the Eeformed churches of Europe, the right 
to the ministerial office depends upon the calling of God. 
A divine vocation, imparting a spiritual fitness for the 
work, is the only mark or character which distinguishes 
the ministry from every other class of men. Those gifts 
of the Holy Ghost, that heavenly and powerful unction, 
by which God qualifies his agents for the positions to 
which he has assigned them, are the only badges of the 
order which the scriptures lead us to recognize. Hence, 
upon our principles, ordination must sustain a very dif- 
ferent relation to the ordo from that which is ascribed to 
it in the churches of England and Home. As with us, it 
is God, through the Spirit, who imparts the ministerial 
commission, and conveys the right to discharge the duties- 
of the office, as God, and God alone, can communicate the 
distinctive qualities of the ordo, ordination, with us, can 
only be an acknowledgment of the fact that a man is a 
minister of God, and entitled to rule and to teach in his 
church. We do not undertake to put into the hands of 
ministers their divine warrant for their work; we only 
receive and set our seal to the credentials which God has 
given. Presbyterian ordination imparts nothing, whether 
character, power, grace, or privilege. It is neither a 
charm nor a commission ; it is a simple acknowledgment 
of what God has done. God has appointed ordination as 
a public recognition, on the part of his church, of the 
rights which he has supernaturally conferred. It is the 
established mode in which it is made to appear that he 
has called and anointed the subject of it for the work of 
the ministry. 

"Such we apprehend to be the nature of Presbyterian 
ordination ; and every other hypothesis, as it seems to us, 
must proceed upon the assumption of prelatists and 
papists, that it is in the power of man to communicate 
the distinctive peculiarities of the ministerial order. 
Every other doctrine must make ordination the commis- 
sion of the ministry. The mystical jargon about the 
transmission of authority, the communication of power, 
the delegation of office, is essentially prelatic; and we 
can conceive of no theory of ordination which renders it 
incompatible for an elder to partake in it, which does not 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIDIES. 



399 



assume that its relation to the or do is that for which pre- 
latists and Romanists contend. 

"The other error relates to the nature of the office of 
the ruling elder. It is becoming common to represent it, 
not as the immediate appointment and institution of 
Christ, the only King and Head of the church, but as the 
creature of the people, possessed of no other powers but 
those which they have chosen to entrust to it. The elder 
can do nothing but what the people themselves might do. 
Christ gave them the power of jurisdiction, and they 
transfer it to the elder. According to this extraordinary 
theory, the people, in mass, might constitute, in connec- 
tion with the ministry, the various judicial assemblies 
of the church. This makes our church government to be 
an odd mixture of an elective aristocracy, the clergy, and 
a pure democracy, the people. But this theory is abso- 
lutely false, unsupported by a single text of scripture or 
a single doctrine of our standards. It is a new thing 
under the sun, to maintain the judicial power of the peo- 
ple. Christ has not committed the government of the 
church into their hands directly. The language of our 
law is as clear and explicit as language can be made. 'The 
Lord Jesus, as King and Head of the church, hath therein 
appointed a government in the hands of church officers/ 
Xot a word is said about the right of the people to co- 
operate in all acts of discipline and government. To these 
officers, and not directly to the people, are committed the 
keys of the kingdom of heaven. This doctrine is largely 
declared in various passages of our standards. Such also 
is the doctrine of Owen, which we recognize to be the 
true doctrine of the scriptures, that k all church power in 
actu primo, or fundamentally, is in the church itself ; in 
actu secundo, or its exercise, in them that are especially 
called thereunto.' 'He hath instituted,' says this great 
man, 'and appointed the offices themselves, and made a 
grant of them unto the church for its edification, as also 
he hath determined and limited the powers and duties of 
the officers. It is not in the power of any, or of all the 
churches in the world, to appoint any office, or officer, in 
the church that Christ hath not appointed.' In the com- 
munication of church power in office unto any person 



400 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



called thereunto, the work and duty of the church consist, 
formally, in acts of obedience unto the commands of 
Christ. Hence it doth not give unto such officers a power 
or authority that was formally and actually in the body 
of the community, by virtue of any grant or law of Christ, 
so as that they should receive and act the power of the 
church by virtue of a delegation from them; but only 

* they design, choose, set apart, the individual persons, who 
thereon are entrusted with office power by Christ himself, 
according as was before declared. 

"This error, that the people, and not Christ, are the 
direct and immediate source of all the power and author- 

* ity committed to the office of ruling elder, has arisen from 
a total misapprehension of the title with which they dis- 
tinguish him, the representative of the people. A repre- 
sentative and a delegate are essentially distinct ; they 
differ, not merely, as Lord Brougham * seems to suppose, 
in the extent of the subjects on which they are authorized 
to act, but in the relation which they bear to those who 
elect them. The officers are radically and essentially dis- 
tinct. A deputy is simply the locum tenens of his prin- 

| cipal, the creature of instructions, which he cannot con- 
sistently transcend — a substitute, and nothing more. A 
representative, on the other hand, is a confidential agent, 
pursuing the dictates of his own understanding, and 
bound to act in conformity with his own private convic- 
tions of right. A deputy is an organ through whom the 
will of his constituents is declared ; a representative de- 
liberates and acts for his constituents, and upon his own 

I personal responsibility must endeavor to promote the true 
interests of the people, whatever may be their temporary 
whims or caprices. Burke was a noble representative, 
but not a deputy, when he declared to the electors of Bris- 
tol, 'I did not obey your instructions ; no ! I conformed 
to the instructions of truth and nature and maintained 
your interest, against your opinions, with a constancy that 
became me ;' and Chatham understood the true nature of 
his office, though he may have erred on a point of eti- 
quette, when he declined presenting a petition from his 
constituents of Bath. 

* Political Philosophy, Vol. III., Chap. vi. 3 p. 31. 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



401 



"Representative government is a different kind of gov- 
ernment from a pure democracy. It is essentially a limi- 
tation upon the people; they choose representatives, be- 
cause it is not safe that they themselves should discharge 
the functions of legislators or rulers. In human govern- 
ments, the power of representatives may, for the most 
part, be ultimately traced to the people, as this whole sys- 
tem of polity is generally, though not always, the off- 
spring of popular will. In establishing this species of 
government, the people create the office of representative, 
define its powers, specify its duties, and settle its rights. 
They form a constitution, the very object of which is to 
prevent the accumulation of too much power in their own 
hands, to restrain the supremacy of their own will, and to 
check the tendencies of absolute authority to abuse and 
tyranny. This constitution, once fixed, is the immediate 
source of all power to all the representatives chosen under 
it ; to it, and to it alone, must they appeal for a knowledge 
of their rights, privileges and duties. It, and not the will 
•of those who elect them, becomes their law. Their rela- 
tions to the constitution, which equally binds them and 
their constituents, render it absurd that they should be 
treated as mere organs, machines, or automatons, through 
which others act. It deserves, further, to be remarked 
that, in all organized states, in which the representative 
principle is a part of the constitution, the representatives 
possess powers and discharge functions to which their 
constituents, as a mass, can lay no claim, putting it, in 
this way, beyond all doubt that a representative and 
deputy are fundamentally distinct. 

"In the church, the representative government is not, 
as in the state, even ultimately the creature of the people ; 
it is the direct appointment of Christ, and the powers 
and duties of ecclesiastical representatives are prescribed 
and defined in the word of God, the real constitution of 
the church. They are represented as rulers, and not as 
tools ; they are to study and administer the laws of the 
Saviour, and not bend to the caprices of the people ; and 
they are to listen to no authoritative instructions but 
those which have proceeded from the throne of God. 
'Christ never gave to the people, as a mass, any right to 



402 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



exercise jurisdiction, or to administer discipline. They 
cannot appear in session or presbytery. It is not only in- 
convenient that they should be there in their collective ca- 
pacity, but they have no right to be there. The privilege 
of their attending as members, as component elements of 
the court, would be destructive of all the ends which rep- 
resentation is designed to secure ; it would subvert the 
whole system of government. The business of the people 
is to elect the men who give sufficient evidence that they 
are fitted by the Spirit to fill the offices which Christ has 
appointed. 'This is the power and right given unto the 
church, essentially considered with respect unto their 
officers, namely, to design, call, choose, and set apart the 
persons by the ways of Christ's appointment unto those 
offices whereunto by his laws he hath annexed church 
power and authority.' These men represent the people, 
because they are the choice of the people. The term rep- 
resentative, therefore, is equivalent to chosen ruler ; it 
designates the manner in which the office is acquired, and 
not the source of its powers. When elders, consequently, 
are styled in our standards the representatives of the peo- 
ple, it is a total misapprehension to suppose that the 
meaning intended to be conveyed is that they are the 
deputies or delegates of the people, occupying a position 
and exercising powers which the people themselves might 
occupy and exercise. The title imports nothing more than 
that they are the persons whom the people have selected, 
as duly qualified and called of God, to perform the func- 
tions which Christ has enjoined upon the rulers of his 
house. The people, as such, possess not a single element 
of the potestas jurisdictionis which pertains to the elders 
and the courts of the church." 

Dr. Thornwell now proceeds to say that from the fore- 
going explanation of the term representative it is per- 
fectly obvious that pastors, by which word he means min- 
isters, are as truly representatives of the people as are 
ruling elders. The reason why the title representatives 
is not given to them, as well as to the ruling elders, is 
that they have other duties unconnected with the govern- 
ment of the church, so that this title cannot be a complete 
description of their office, as it is of the elder's office. Be 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



403 



this as it may, the scriptures and our standards expressly 
teach that the ruling elder is strictly and properly a pres- 
byter, and, therefore, entitled to participate in all acts in 
which any presbyter, as such, can bear a part. 

But elaborate .efforts have been made to prove that the 
elder is not properly a presbyter, this term being re- 
stricted to preachers, to preachers as such, and to preach- 
ers exclusively. Dr. Thornwell well says that the mani- 
fest effect of this theory is to invalidate the arguments for 
the divine appointment of the office drawn from the nat- 
ural meaning of the title, the acknowledged constitution 
of the Jewish synagogue, and the plurality of elders con- 
fessedly ordained in the apostolic churches. "When these 
points are abandoned," says Dr. Thornwell, "we know of 
nothing stronger or clearer that shall be left from which a 
scriptural warrant for our system can be deduced. To us 
they seem to have been consistent, who, when they had 
proved that the ruling elder was not a presbyter, were 
prepared to abolish the office as a human contrivance, and 
an unnecessary appendage to the church." His reference 
here is to a somewhat celebrated article published, in Dr. 
Hodge's Princeton Review, shortly previous to the Gen- 
eral Assembly at Rochester, in 1860, which article was 
expressly abjured in that Assembly by Dr. McGill, and 
the responsibility for which Dr. Hodge himself after- 
wards made very significant and very earnest efforts to 
escape. 

Dr. Thornwell concludes his review of Dr. Breckin- 
ridge's sermon by showing that it is at once the doctrine 
of our standards and the word of God, that presbyter, as 
a title of office, means a ruler, and nothing more than a 
ruler. He enters into a very thorough examination of the 
question, on what ground is the minister of the word 
styled a presbyter? That this word, presbyter, is not 
synonymous with preacher, he demonstrates at length, in 
the use of both learning and logic. I cannot copy his 
demonstration, nor am I able to condense it, but I com- 
mend it to the scholarly inquirer's careful attention. 

In this attempt to write a history of the controversy 
about elders in the Presbyterian Church, before it was 
necessarily divided by the war of 1861-1865, I have 



404 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



chosen to regard Dr. Hodge as the leader and representa- 
tive of one side of that controversy. Drs. Breckinridge 
and Thornwell were leaders on the other side. As Dr. 
Charles Hodge was, perhaps, the greatest, so also he was 
the latest advocate of the theory which denies that ruling 
elders are true and proper presbyters. This Presbyterian 
controversy ended in the Northern church, so far as I 
know, with the Assembly at Rochester, in 1860. For in 
what then became the Southern church, "known officially 
as the Presbyterian Church in the United States," very 
little, if any, general controversy about the elder ever 
prevailed. 

Evidently dissatisfied with the exhibition he had made 
as a Presbyterian in the memorable debate on the board 
question, in which he had led one side, Dr. Hodge subse- 
quently read to the Assembly at Rochester a carefully 
prepared statement of his Presbyterianism, as I have 
stated in the preceding pages. I here insert from that 
statement two paragraphs, seven and eight, which give his 
views of the elder question. They will set before the 
reader very comprehensively the ideas that prevailed 
amongst the party which he led. Here is paragraph num- 
ber seven: 

"7. That, as there is no class of officers above the pres- 
byters, no gifts higher than those which constitute a min- 
ister of the word, presbyters are the highest permanent 
officers of the church, and stand all on the same level ; all 
have the same office and the same prerogatives. This is 
the parity of the clergy. There are no apostles, no 
prophets, and, of course, no prelates." 

This paragraph is levelled against the claims of Epis- 
copal prelates. In other words, it states the doctrine of 
the parity of all ministers of the word, whom it calls the 
"clergy" — a word no Presbyterian ought ever to apply in 
this way. Speaking of these ministers of the word, and 
of them alone, Dr. Hodge says, "Presbyters are the high- 
est permanent officers of the church, and stand all on the 
same level; all have the same office and the same pre- 
rogatives." Here he sets himself and his party against 
Paul, in 1 Timothy v. 17, where the apostle divides pres- 
byters into two classes, one of which only "'rule well." 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



405 



But the other, and the higher, class labor also in the word 
and doctrine. 

Here is paragraph number eight : 

"8. That the right of the people to take part in the gov- 
ernment of the church, is exercised through their repre- 
sentatives, the ruling elders. Here is the principle of 
representation, and here is the foundation of the peculiar 
character of our church courts. They are composed of 
two elements — a lay and clerical — ministers and elders. 
This representation of the people is, first, in the session, 
then in the presbytery, then in the synod, and then in the 
General Assembly. In all, the elders have the same right 
with the ministers to participate in the exercise of all the 
powers of the church — executive, legislative, and judicial. 
They are in our courts, not by courtesy, not by human 
ordinance, but of divine right." 

Thus, in paragraph number eight, Dr. Hodge asserts 
the right of the people to take part in the government of 
the church, through their representatives, the ruling 
elders. So then "the clergy' 7 are not representatives of 
the people, and the government of the church, it follows, 
is not all of it in the hands of the people through their 
representatives, but only a part of that government. In 
whose hands is the other part lodged ? Manifestly in the 
hands of "the clergy.' 7 Therefore, I denounced the use 
of that name as unpresbyterian and unprotestant. That 
name originated in the Romish idea that the Lord's "lot," 
that is, the Lord's cleros, or portion, was the priesthood. 
They are the clergy, while the people are no part of the 
Lord's lot, but only sheep for the clergy to shear. These 
"clergymen," if Dr. Hodge will give that name to min- 
isters of the word, are lords of the church, but they allow 
the people a part in this government, through their repre- 
sentatives, the ruling elders ! The ministers, it will be ob- 
served, are not representatives of the people, but the 
people's lords and masters! Here is Dr. Hodge's "prin- 
ciple of representation." Here is the "foundation of the 
peculiar character of our church courts !" There are two 
elements in these courts — one a lay element, the other a 
clerical. This certainly would make our church courts 
to be of a very peculiar character, but as certainly not 



406 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



a scriptural character. The officers whom Christ gives to 
be rulers in the church, the elders, presbyters, or bishops, 
are not a "lay element," neither are they a "clerical ele- 
ment." Both classes of the office of elder (otherwise 
called presbyter or bishop) are rulers, and they are equal 
as rulers. But one of these classes has the superadded 
office of teaching, and, as to this office, the two classes are 
not equal, and are not entitled to the same degree of honor, 
according to apostolic statement. 

Dr. Hodge starts out, in paragraph number seven, with 
such a use of the word presbyter as confines it to his 
"clergy." But he closes up paragraph number eight with 
a full and complete acknowledgment that elders have the 
same right with ministers in all the courts, and that his 
laymen are equally of divine right with his "clergymen." 

To what straits is the author of this statement reduced 
upon his plan of setting forth that great foundation prin- 
ciple of our Presbyterian system — the principle of repre- 
sentation ! He perceived that he must not deny that the 
true and real church of God consists of free men, made 
free by the Son. As such, it must be a free Christian 
commonwealth, governed, under its divine Head, by his 
people, but not directly. The people are to rule through 
their own chosen representatives. Accordingly, Congre- 
gationalism, which is the direct government of the people, 
is to be rejected. On the other hand, neither prelates or 
popes are ever chosen by the people. What now remains ? 
Only the middle ground, set forth in scripture: the 
church is to be governed, now as from the beginning, by 
ruling elders, every one of whom is elected as their rep- 
resentative by the people. 

But the author of this statement is not willing to ac- 
knowledge ruling elders as true and proper presbyters. 
He wants to make "presbyter" mean "preacher." And 
so he insists that the elder, though chosen by God's people 
to be their ruler, is only a layman and must not be called 
a presbyter. He wants to make out of his presbyter what 
he calls a "clergyman." He wants what he calls his clergy 
to rule the church. So there is left to Christ's free people 
only a part in the representative government, and those 
who exercise this part of the representative government 



THE CONTROVEESIES OF MY TIMES. 



407 



must still continue to be only laymen. Thus our church 
must have a mixed representation — one half laymen, the 
other half clergymen — but no ruling elders and no min- 
isters of the word. And, as paragraph eight says, that 
the people's part in the government of the church "is ex- 
ercised through their representatives, the ruling elders," 
it follows that only the lay element represents the people, 
so that the clerical element must have the higher duty of 
representing the clergy. 

And yet, after all these incongruous things have been 
said, Dr. Hodge's statement about the ruling elder con- 
cludes with the remarkable acknowledgment that "the 
elders have the same right with the ministers to partici- 
pate in the exercise of all the powers of the church — ex- 
ecutive, legislative, and judicial. They are in our courts, 
not by courtesy, not by human ordinance, but of divine 
right.'" 

The reader will acknowledge that these final expres- 
sions of Dr. Hodge are very strong, although he makes 
the ruling elder only a layman. He will not let him be a 
true and proper presbyter, yet, by divine authority, he is 
entitled, as much as any minister, to participate in the ex- 
ercise of all church power — executive, legislative, and 
judicial ! Thus, as the result of the debate with his great 
antagonist, he is led to yield to the ruling elder all that 
has been claimed by the party he opposes. Had Dr. 
Hodge forgotten that, with all this church power in the 
ruling elder's hand, legislative, judicial, and executive, 
he has made him a necessary member of the presbytery's 
quorum, and given him the right to lay on hands in a 
minister's ordination ? 

It has been made very evident, as it seems to me, that 
the party represented by Dr. Hodge did not teach the old 
doctrine of genuine Presbyterianism. That doctrine, in 
its fullness, is as old as the Xew Testament epistles, while 
some of its parts can be traced backwards to the time of 
AToses, and even to the very beginning, for the church of 
God began to be at the very fall of Adam, while the ante- 
diluvian patriarchs may very justly be claimed to be 
elders that ruled. Xext to the ISTew Testament epistles, 
we meet ruling elders, otherwise called presbyters and 



408 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



bishops, in the epistles of the three apostolic fathers, 
Clement, Polycarp, and Ignatius. Their history runs 
down through all the ages, as it is traced by Dr. Breckin- 
ridge, in his second great Baltimore speech, and by Dr. 
Thornwell, in his article entitled "The Kuling Elder a 
Presbyter," to which the reader will find appended notes 
on this subject of special learning and value. (See Col- 
lected Writings, Vol. IV., pp. 115-131.) It is the doc- 
trine of Calvin, and all the Reformed churches; of the 
Scotch church, as organized by Knox ; of the four great 
Scotch Presbyterian divines, who led the Westminster 
Assembly through its great work; of the Scotch and 
Scotch-Irish emigrants to this country, whom the Plan of 
Union vainly attempted to hybridize ; of old Dr. Samuel 
Miller, in his work on the ruling eldership. 

The new doctrine came into our church from the Con- 
gregationalists, who have given us many of their best men, 
and they naturally brought their own ideas of church gov- 
ernment with them, and engrafted them upon the 
churches of the North and Northwest. As for the emi- 
nent Dr. Hodge, he became especially a student of dog- 
matic theology, and made it very evident at Rochester 
that he had not studied church government. In fact, he 
seems to have held the doctrine of church government a 
matter of minor consideration — perhaps, naturally for 
one who devoted all his life to systematic theology. He 
manifested great surprise that Dr. Thornwell should have 
represented church order as much a matter of divine right 
as any other part of revelation. But, do Ave not know that 
order is, and from the very first has been, the guardian 
and protector of truth ? The very first revelations God 
made known to fallen man required to be thus protected, 
and were thus protected down till the time of Abraham. 
Accordingly, there was set apart one day in seven to be 
devoted to God's worship, and continually bloody sacri- 
fices were to be offered, and there were patriarchs to teach 
and maintain the truth. But there was no formally or- 
ganized church, separating the sons of God from the men 
of the world, and so revealed truth perished in all the 
earth. Abraham is then called, and the church formally 
set up in his solitary family. To its faithful care the 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



revealed oracles were committed until the Messiah should, 
appear. In this Abrahamic church, patriarchs continued 
to rule, and there were ruling elders, even when that 
church was in Egyptian bondage. To Abraham was also* 
given circumcision, an external sign and seal for assur- 
ance to him of righteousness. Israel had also synagogues,, 
precursors of our Christian congregations, constituting 
social worship all over the land from Sabbath to Sabbath.. 
"Moses of old time had in every city them that preack 
him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day' 7 " 
(Acts xv. 21). They had "teaching priests," and "Levites 
to give the sense" of w T hat was read. They had psalms- 
for the singing of God's praises. The synagogue had its 
rulers from the beginning. It was they who called on 
Paul and Barnabas for the word of exhortation. By the 
help of such ordinances, the Abrahamic church, passing- 
through the Mosaic economy, faithfully conserved reve- 
lation down to Christ. It was these by which the Lord 
fenced round his truth. This wall prevented the doctrine- 
from being trampled down (Isaiah v. 2, 5). Christ 
comes to give his church its new and Christian form and 
name, and to entrust it with the care and promulgation 
of brighter, grander, and more important revelations of 
his truth. Did he furnish that church with no ordinances- 
of divine right which were to be the bulwark and barrier 
of these truths ? The inspired apostles Christianized the™ 
synagogue, but added still higher and stronger defences 
of the truth than had been committed to it. Israel was 
under the bondage of rites and ceremonies. We have been 
set free by the Son, and we are free indeed. Office- 
bearers of a higher character are given to the Christian 
church. The services and worship of Israel were spirit- 
ual. Ours are intended and expected to be more spiritual. 
They kept the Jewish Sabbath. We enjoy the far more- 
holy and blessed privilege of sanctifying the Lord's day r 
and of celebrating his resurrection, which is the pledge 
of ours. The Jews had the bloody sacrament of circum- 
cision. The Christian church has the baptism of water 
and the Spirit. They had the Passover, with its associa- 
tions of deliverance from the angel of death, as well as 
the power of Egypt. But we enjoy the Lord's supper,, 



410 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



with its far more endearing remembrances, and its far 
more spiritual and heavenly hopes. Above all, they had 
set before them the straitening and compressing idea of 
their being God's peculiar people, closely shut in from 
intermarriage and all other kinds of intercommunion 
with the outside world. Indeed, they were required to 
kill off all the inhabitants that had preceded them in 
Canaan, lest they themselves should be corrupted, and 
also corrupt the truths committed to them. We are to 
have our hearts' deepest and tenderest sympathies aroused 
within us, and enthused by the most unselfish, heroic, and 
holiest aspirations through that last word of our Lord, 
"Go, make all men your brothers and my servants." 

Now, looking at all these Christian ordinances, and 
other effectual external influences, provided by the Lord 
to enable his church for her constant and watchful guar- 
dianship and dissemination of the glorious gospel com- 
mitted to her, is it not preposterous for any man to deny 
that order was revealed just as much as doctrine ? Do we 
not clearly perceive that our Saviour has taken particular 
care about the kinds of officers or agents he ordained for 
the adequate and exact transmission to succeeding gener- 
ations of the doctrines revealed by him to his church ? 
This was a point to be specially guarded, and specially 
did our Lord guard it. We were not left, it is said, like 
children to be carried about by every wind of doctrine. 
The truths revealed to us were fenced against being over- 
run and trampled down by the sleight of men and cunning 
craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. No, we 
have pastors and teachers provided, through whose double 
ministration we and our doctrine should be protected, so 
that we should grow up into him in all things, who is the 
Head, even Christ. 

But Dr. Hodge maintained that order cannot be of 
divine right, like doctrine; such matters are left to our 
discretion, because we live in the dispensation of the 
Spirit. But, if in this dispensation of ours we enjoy, 
more than in the former, the guidance of the Spirit, does 
it not seem that less must be left to our discretion, rather 
than more? Does not the canon of revealed scripture 
close with a most solemn warning to any man who shall 



THE CONTROVERSIES OF MY TIMES. 



411 



add to or take away from the things written ? Perhaps 
the Christian church has never suffered as much from any 
other one thing as from the religious inventions of human 
wisdom, and the profane interferences of human discre- 
tion with the arrangements of God. 



CHAPTEK XII.— Paet 2. 



CONTEOVEESIES OF SCIENCE WITH THE WoED OF GOD. 

1884-1891. 



CIENCE is knowledge ; our English word answers to 



kJ the old Greek word gnosis. The gnostics were the 
scientists of old, that is, the knowing ones. The philos- 
ophers followed after the gnostics, but they chose a more 
modest title, for their name signifies only lovers of 
wisdom. 

It would seem that the controversy of science with the 
Bible dates many centuries back. Scripture teachings 
were opposed nineteen hundred years ago by the Saddu- 
cees, disciples of the learned Sadoc. We all remember the 
elaborate argument they brought against our Saviour's 
doctrine of the human spirit and the resurrection of 
man's body, and how that argument became thin air as 
soon as touched by him. So also the same opposition of 
science to the Bible arose in Athens when certain philos- 
ophers of the Epicureans and the Stoics encountered 
Paul, reckoning him a babbler because he preached Jesus 
and the resurrection. But in point of fact, did not the 
opposition of science, falsely so called, really begin very 
much further back ? Did not our first mother derive from 
a very bad quarter a doctrine she believed to be true 
knowledge, so that though God had said, "You shall surely 
die," she was led to believe and profess "we shall not 
surely die ?" 

The Rev. William Ellison Boggs, D. D., 

Chancellor of the University of Georgia, in an unpub- 
lished essay I am allowed to use freely, raises the ques- 
tion, how far the Presbyterian creed in the Westminster 
standards or the Bible itself have been modified by the 
discoveries of modern physical science. He answers : Not 
at all. Certain popular opinions closely connected with 




CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



413 



the scriptures have been greatly modified, but these 
opinions are mere human theories not affecting the sub- 
stance of our divine religious belief. These popular no- 
tions relate to material things — the earth, sun, moon and 
stars, animals and plants — and the Bible is in nowise 
responsible for these theories. It teaches nothing at all 
in regard to them. Men gather these notions elsewhere 
and unconsciously read them into the Bible. Science, 
in sweeping away these figments leaves the word of God 
untouched and better comprehended, and the Chancellor 
insists that we therefore keep steadily in view the differ- 
ence between the word of God in the Bible, and its inter- 
pretations by uninspired men. All their opinions are 
liable to more or less of error ; but the sacred text itself as 
God gave it to men we hold to be infallibly true in every 
line and word. It may be added that all translations are 
of the nature of human interpretations, and when science 
in any of its branches can shed new light upon the true 
meaning of the sacred text, it deserves the thanks and not 
the reprobation of Christian readers. 

The Science of Zoology. 

Chancellor Boggs derives his first illustration from this 
science. The Hebrew term reem is translated unicorn 
in the English Bible, meaning a one-horned horse, an 
imaginary animal that never existed. It was long be- 
lieved to exist somewhere in the unexplored wilds of 
Asia. Probably, when the Septuagint translation was 
made, some two centuries before Christ, such an animal 
was believed in, and the Greek translators may have used 
the word "unicorn" to designate that belief. However, the 
science of zoology has since satisfied all intelligent men 
that no such horse-like animal could ever have existed. 
But there is one species of the rhinoceros which has one 
horn. But science has proved that the evidence at -hand 
discourages the belief of the one-horned rhinoceros having 
been in Palestine within the human period. The descrip- 
tions of the unicorn in the Bible do not agree with the 
characteristics of the rhinoceros, but do exactly suit the 
buffalo, which is plentiful even yet in Syria. And 
Smith's dictionary calls attention to the fact that our 



414 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



translation substitutes a plural "unicorns" for the singular 
"reem" in Deut. xxxiii. 17. "And his horns are like the 
horns of unicorns/' as if each animal had but one horn,, 
whereas the Hebrew reads, "His horns are like the horns 
of a reem," showing that one animal had two horns. And 
the marginal reading correctly says, "An unicorn." The 
Syrian buffalo in its wild state is evidently the creature 
referred to by the term unicorn. Thus the science of 
zoology has helped us to expurgate out of our revised Eng- 
lish Bible the error introduced by the old Greek transla- 
tion and followed by our King James' version. 

Chancellor Boggs proceeds to consider some of the 
scientific controversies which have marked the history of 
Christianity. 

The Geographical Coxteoversy. 

He begins with the controversy which greAV out of the 
modern geography, although this controversy was finished 
before our Westminster standards were written. The 
scriptures have occasion to refer to the earth, not to teach 
the science of geography, but to set before men the wis- 
dom, power and goodness of God. To teach these relig- 
ious lessons the Bible uses the current expressions of those 
times. There was no other way, unless it should invent 
terms of its own, which would have been incomprehen- 
sible to the people. Thus the scriptures speak of ''the 
four corners of the earth" as we now speak of the four 
cardinal points of the compass. But when men began to 
reason about the shape of the earth, this phrase on the 
lips of the people came to be associated with the scientific 
theory that the earth is a flat, four-cornered body. Then 
when people read the Bible, they read into it this theory. 
Among the seed-thoughts, however, bequeathed by the 
Greek mind to the world was the suggestion made by 
Plato and others that the earth is a globe. Disregarded 
for ages this idea reappeared from time to time in various 
places. But it was utterly repugnant to those who found 
their geography in the Bible. The controversy between 
the Greek suggestion of a spherical earth and the ecclesi- 
astical geography waxed hotter and hotter, until appeared 
a certain Cosmas, surnamed Indicopleustes, obviously be- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



415 



cause he had achieved the most unparalleled feat of mak- 
ing a voyage to India. Searching his Bible for proofs of 
the flat four-cornered theory, he came upon these words in 
Hebrews ix. 1, "A worldly sanctuary." In these words 
Cosmas finds scripture authority for his theory that the 
earth must be shaped like the Jewish sanctuary, which 
had four corners. Thus did Cosmas settle the question, 
and geography was accepted as revealed in the scriptures, 
so that to doubt any part of it was to be an infidel. 

This ecclesiastical geography held on its way for hun- 
dreds of years. When Columbus pleaded for ships and 
men that he might cross the Atlantic this ecclesiastical 
science of geography opposed him fiercely. If the earth 
were a globe there must be antipodes — men living oppo- 
site to our feet, so that they would be walking with their 
heads hanging down like flies craAvling on the ceiling. It 
was only when the proofs grew to be overwhelming that 
very slowly the old error faded away, and ecclesiastics 
ceased to thunder from their pulpits the impiety of the 
new science of geography. Of course, the effect of this 
folly was to bring the church and the Bible into contempt 
with many intelligent persons. But when the storm had 
ceased the Bible was found intact and living, only certain 
spurious opinions that had been associated with the Bible 
wrongfully had been swept away. Certain uninspired in- 
terpretations of scripture had, been shown to be mistakes. 
But the word of God was unharmed. 

The Astronomical Controversy. 

Another controversy, says Chancellor Boggs, which to 
many of the best men in the world seemed to threaten the 
very foundations of the faith, arose in connection with the 
new astronomy. The sacred writers frequently refer to 
the sun, moon and stars to set forth the wisdom, power 
and goodness of the Creator. The object is always a re- 
ligious one. Their object never is to teach us astronomy. 
They employ the only language which the men of early 
ages could comprehend — "the language of the senses." 
We also in our day find it necessary to use this language 
still. The British Nautical Almanac, for example, which 
is thoroughly scientific, continues to speak of the sun ris- 



41G 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



ing and setting, though, of course, the editors of that 
scientific treatise know perfectly well that the appearance 
and disappearance of the sun are due not to his motion, 
"but to the turning of the earth on her axis once in twenty- 
four hours. 

But in the course of time men began to reason and to 
speculate about the relative motions and magnitudes of 
the earth, the moon, sun and stars. And these crude the- 
ories, based at first on the obvious appearances of the 
heavenly bodies, became rooted in the minds of God's 
people. Naturally enough, they would unconsciously 
read these crude theories into their Bibles. Failing to 
consider that the Bible is not an encyclopedia of human 
knowledge, but a purely religious book, they tried to fix 
upon it the yoke of their imperfect science. 

Among the priceless treasures bequeathed by Greek 
thought to the modern world, however, were the hints of a 
better astronomy. Facts had been observed which seemed 
to show that the sun, not our earth, is the centre of our 
•.system of worlds, and his apparent motion is our real 
motion transferred to him. Instances of such transferred 
motion were known to the ancients, as when we sit in a 
boat as it rapidly recedes from the shore, we misjudge ap- 
pearances and seem to see the shore moving back from us. 
Our eyes do not deceive us, but we misjudge the signs 
which they give us. 

Thus, step by step, those who watched the heavenly 
bodies began to detect those less obvious facts which reveal 
the truth that the sun stands still and we move. By and 
by these hints fell upon fruitful soil and brought forth 
fruit. A certain priest of the Roman church, Kopernik 
"by name, residing on the borders of Poland, became a 
^deeply interested observer of the heavens. All that we 
know of him shows that he led a godly life, free from 
scandal and given to prayer and charitable deeds. For a 
time he was professor of astronomy at Borne, and without 
rebuke was allowed to expound his view "purely as a 
"hypothesis." After awhile he became convinced that the 
^hypothesis was true. But he also knew that Rome was a 
very unsafe place in which to say what he thought. Re- 
turning to his parish on the borders of Poland he medi- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



417 



tated, prayed, and then wrote his book. With the utmost 
secrecy it was printed, and when he lay upon his death- 
bed, assured by his physician that he had but a few hours 
to live, he sent for his immortal work, kissed it, prayed 
over it, and then sent it out no more as a "mere hypoth- 
esis/' but as a demonstrated truth to revolutionize the con- 
ceptions of mankind as to the grandeur and glory of this 
mighty universe. Death had placed him beyond the 
reach of torture, but it did not save his memory from re- 
proach as an innovator and an enemy of the word of God. 
And yet upon his tombstone is one of the most beautiful 
-of Christian epitaphs : "I ask not, Lord, that grace which 
thou gavest to Peter and to Paul, but such mercy as thou 
didst show to the thief on the cross." Yet the Pope caused 
his book, demonstrating that the sun is the fixed centre 
around which the earth and sister planets revolve, to be 
inserted on the Index Prohibitorum Librorum, which can 
only be read at the risk of one's soul. 

i^or was the Roman church alone in her denunciation 
of the Copernican heresy. Luther railed at the true 
•science after this fashion, "People gave ear to an upstart 
astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not 
the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. . . . 
This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astron- 
omy, but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded 
the sun to stand still and not, the earth." The mild and 
gentle Melanchthon was not a whit behind his great leader 
in his indignant denunciations : "low it is a want of hon- 
esty and decency to assert such notions publicly, and the 
example is pernicious. It is the part of a good mind to 
accept the truth as revealed by God and to acquiesce in 
it." He then cites passages to show what he imagines to 
"be the science taught in the Bible. Calvin, too, condemns 
all who say that the earth is not the centre around which 
sun and stars revolve, citing the scripture and demanding, 
"Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus 
above that of the Holy Spirit ?" 

It is a sorrowful tale of poor Galileo. His telescope 
Tevealed to him the phases of Venus, and he saw the beau- 
tiful moons of Jupiter revolving around the mighty 
planet, but his knowledge cost him dear. He was im- 



418 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



prisoned, dragged before the Inquisition and forced to 
perjure himself in order to escape death. Ecclesiastical 
science continued to be taught in the universities of the 
churches, Roman and Protestant, Men came through 
their knowledge of God's word to hate the church, and, 
alas ! for them, to reject the Bible, which they were per- 
suaded by even ministers of the gospel held false views as 
to the earth and sun. But when the storm passed by, it- 
was found entirely possible to hold to the Bible and the 
Copernican science. 

The Geological Coxteoyebsy. 

This controversy, Chancellor Boggs, strictly speaking, 
says, belongs to our own age. Yet hints of the vast an- 
tiquity of the earth had been dropped by some clear- 
headed thinkers of ancient Greece. The suggestion was 
treated with scorn by such good men as Lactantius, called 
"The Christian Cicero," and by that far greater man, 
Augustine, of Hippo in Xorth Africa, who anticipated 
Calvin in developing from the scriptures that very system 
of doctrine which is embodied in the Westminster Con- 
fession of Faith. Jerome, the great biblical scholar, ex- 
plained the twisted and broken strata of the earth as spe- 
cial expressions of God's wrath against sin. The eloquent 
and vehement Tertullian made a suggestion that was to 
bear fruit in future. The fossils, he thought, were all of 
them the effects of the ^oachian deluge. 

Curious indeed were the speculations of the schoolmen 
respecting these fossils. Some said fossils are due to a 
"stone-making force in nature.'' Some considered them 
to possess powers of propagation like animals and plants. 
The Reformers gave no encouragement to these over- 
curious inquiries into the processes of creation. Pfeiffer, 
eminent in the Lutheran church in Germany, in his Pan- 
sopJiia Mosaica, sought to beat back all such efforts to be 
wise beyond the letter of scripture. Sir Matthew Hale, 
the eminent English lawyer and judge, took the same 
ground against scientific investigation into matters of 
which scripture treats. Leonardo da Vinci in Italy and 
Palissy of France caught glimpses of the truth, but their 
thoughts were smothered by the theologians under such 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



high-sounding phrases as "lapidific force/' "seminal 
air/ 7 "tumultuous movement of terrestrial exhalations." 
And finally appeared the happy thought, "sports of na- 
ture/ ' intimating the wonderful idea that God had just 
chosen without any apparent design to put these curious 
shells, bones and tracks into the fossil beds just as they 
appear without having created any animal creatures to 
whom they belonged. Thus the farce went on. Buffon,, 
the eminent French naturalist, stated clearly the princi- 
ples of geology. But he found, poor man, that he was pre- 
mature. The doctors of the Sorbonne took him in hand 
for attacking the authority of scripture and extorted from 
him a recantation through terror. Well done, thou Ro- 
man Church in France ! But Protestants in England and 
America were not behind her. Bishop Burnet, John Wes- 
ley, Adam Clarke, Richard Watson, William Cowper 
(the writer of sweet hymns), Moses Stuart of Andover, 
and a host of other excellent men, pooh-poohed and jeered! 
and scolded and anathematized geology and geologists. 
The bones of a great fossil lizard being unearthed in Ger- 
many, out came the learned Scheuchzer's explanation,, 
which set scientists to laughing and cursing : Homo Dilu- 
vii Testis — "A Man [Lizard!] Witnessing to the Del- 
uge." But such pious explanations were offensive to Vol- 
taire, who in the interests of infidelity sought to efface the^ 
testimony of fossils to the Noachian deluge by the origi- 
nal hypothesis that the fossil fishes discovered in the Alps 
were the remains of the fish provided by pilgrims for their 
journeys ; the fossil shells, he said, were oyster shells cast 
away by travellers who had eaten their contents, while an 
immense fossil animal was a skeleton from the museum 
of some ancient philosopher ! 

But, little by little, truth has prevailed. Inch by inch, 
the mistaken friends of the Bible have been driven from 
the field. A human interpretation has perished, but the 
word of our God abideth forever. 

The Evolution Controversy. 

Properly speaking the question of evolution concerns 
the possibility of the development of a new species. The- 
exact point at issue between the older science and the new 



420 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



was this : Are the species of plants and animals absolutely 
fixed and immutable, or are they liable to such variations 
that under favorable conditions new species may arise by 
the processes of natural birth from older species \ To 
this question the older science, as represented by Cuvier 
and Agassiz, made answer that species are absolutely fixed 
within certain lines of variation that can never be crossed. 
As they first appear, so they continue until they disappear 
forever. But the new science represented by Darwin, 
Wallace, Mivart, Huxley, Helmholtz, and other authori- 
ties, holds that species are mutable ; that the lines of 
separation are not immovable, but that under favorable 
conditions new species of plants and animals may arise by 
natural birth, the offspring being sufficiently unlike their 
parents to constitute the new species. 

Both the old science and the new seem, however, to 
agree that the evolution doctrine is still open to discus- 
sion, though only as an hypothesis, because, as they gen- 
erally seem to think, in point of fact, no instance of the 
origin of a new species has as yet fallen under human ob- 
servation. The evidence for evolution is circumstantial 
only. 

Here ends Chancellor Boggs's admirable introduction to 
my history of the evolution controversy. 

The new scientists, so far as I understand the matter, 
think they have discovered satisfactorily that the animal 
creation consisted in the beginning of a very few species 
with such a constitution of their nature as that from them 
other species might naturally arise occasionally. But 
here at the very beginning of these investigations we find 
theistic and atheistic evolutionists — the one class believ- 
ing in a personal God, the creator of all, the other class 
worshipping only what they call Xature. Both classes 
work peaceably and harmoniously together in their 
studies of natural science excepting in relation to that one 
point of difference. They both trace the successively aris- 
ing new species onwards and upwards until they come to 
man. Here the atheistic evolutionists find in mankind as 
much a simple product of evolution as any race of animals 
that preceded them. But the theistic evolutionists find in 
Adam the topmost glory of God's creating work upon the 



C0JS T TK0VEKSIES OF SCIENCE. 



421 



earth. The atheistic evolutionists, of course, renounce 
God together with both his works and his word. But the 
theistic evolutionists are Christian men, believing every 
word of the Bible, and maintaining that the Creator's 
word and works, each rightly understood, cannot contra- 
dict each other. These will not shut their eyes to any 
light which science really and truly sets before them. 
They put God's revealed word in the Bible above any hu- 
man science. With them there is no error in the scrip- 
tures as God originally gave them, and so they maintain 
that science also, rightly understood, can tell no lies. 
These persons allow full liberty to scientific investigation, 
satisfied that its work is not yet fully accomplished. 
While the canon of scripture was closed when the inspired 
John finished the Apocalypse, "unto which scriptures 
nothing is at any time to be added, whether by new revela- 
tions of the Spirit or traditions of men," yet on the other 
hand, science, no doubt, has and shall have much more to 
say in its own peculiar line, and intelligent believers in 
the Bible are waiting to hear and to judge. 

I have just said that, according to my understanding of 
the matter, the theistic evolutionists find in Adam the 
topmost glory of God's creating work upon the earth. 
They seem to me to understand that it was the Trinity 
who spake those words, "Let us make man in our image 
after our likeness, and let them have dominion over all 
our created work. So God created man in his own image ; 
in the image of God created he him, male and female 
created he them/' God is one, yet God reveals himself as 
existing in three persons holding communion with one 
another, which is an insoluble mystery humbly believed 
by us, yet impossible to be comprehended by the human 
mind. And so God creates man, but not Adam alone, for 
out of Adam's side he evolves an help meet for Adam, so 
that while Adam was created an individual, he was yet to 
be the head of a race, he was to constitute a new species, 
and then God blessed them, and said unto them, Be fruit- 
ful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it. 

I suppose that in a certain sense the history of theistic 
evolution may be said to end here. Bather let me say 
this hypothesis recognizes here a miraculous interruption 



422 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



-of its course. Only the body of man, according to it, was 
evolved, that is, mediately created, while the Creator im- 
mediately unites to that body a rational and immortal 
spirit, so that Adam arises, who is the glory of God's cre- 
ating work on the earth. Then, as the theistic evolution- 
ist reads in scripture, from the body of this immortal 
creature thrown into a deep sleep one rib is taken, and out 
of it Eve is created a help meet for Adam, and they be- 
come the parents of the whole human race with all its 
varieties, for, as the Bible says, God has made of one 
blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the 
earth. Here again begins evolution, but it is of a new 
sort, for no new species have ever been or ever will be 
evolved. With the creation of this human race the Cre- 
ator's work of evolving successive species is finished. He 
is still creating, but he evolves no new species of created 
animals. The theistic evolutionist quotes for this view 
that after creating man, "God rested on the seventh day 
from all his work which he had made." He had gradually 
brought into being every kind of animal and plant neces- 
sary for man's comfort. This was the end he had kept in 
^ r iew from the beginning, preparing for the highest, the 
human creature, a suitable habitation on this earth. The 
Psalmist says, "The heaven, even the heavens are the 
Lord's, but the earth hath he given to the children of 
-men." Thus they constitute a royal race, having domin- 
ion over all things upon this earth, and wearing the very 
image and likeness of their Creator. But our Saviour 
tells us, "My Father worketh hitherto and I work." Thus 
God's work of creation widely considered has never 
ended. He has not rested from that work. It is he that 
created every animal including insect, fish, reptile, bird 
or beast that has ever come into being since the first six 
•days' work, but he has created them mediately. Just so 
has he created mediately the body of every child of Adam 
that ever was born, but the spirit of every such child he 
"has created immediately. Theistic evolution maintains 
that in respect of these last his work before and after the 
six days has ever been precisely alike, human bodies me- 
diately created, human spirits immediately. 

Here now come the opposers of theistic evolution alleg- 



COISTTEOVEESIES of science. 



423 



ing that this theory degrades Adam, head of the royal 
race. But it is answered, Adam degraded himself; and 
it might be asked if your pride cannot bow to the idea 
that the body of Adam the First had its origin among a 
race of innocent brutes, how can your faith glory in be- 
lieving that Adam the Second, the eternal Son of God, 
took to himself a body and dwelt in it for thirty-three 
years, and will dwell in it forever, that had its origin 
amongst a race of guilty sinners, while it was also nour- 
ished during all his life on earth by the flesh of beasts \ 

This general statement of the case as to the hypothesis 
of evolution would seem to show that unless the Bible is 
to be taken as a truly scientific book there could be little 
chance for a collision between it and the theistic evolution 
theory. In all the previous conflicts of physical science 
with the Bible, this mistake had been made by those who 
believed the scriptures. Evolution, theistically under- 
stood, is a purely secular question, not at all affecting re- 
ligion, which is all that the Bible is intended to teach. Its 
^commission was not to teach zoology, nor geography, nor 
astronomy, nor geology, nor anything about what God 
may have done upon this globe before he gave it its pres- 
ent form and other arrangements, and finally placed it 
under man as its ruler and lord. It was revealed simply 
to teach what man, this final product of creation, "is to 
believe concerning God and what duty God requires of 
man. 77 But now a new mistake was added to the old one 
— the mistake of supposing that the study of God's works 
could evolve a contradiction of his word, or that physical 
science, properly interpreted, could tend to atheism. 
These are the points around which revolved our evolution 
controversy in the Southern Presbyterian Church. 

I must now take the reader back some twenty-five years 
to give some account of the origin of the Perkins profes- 
sorship, which has been involved in this controversy. It 
was in the fall of 1859 that the Synods of South Carolina, 
Georgia, and Alabama, in accordance with the conditions 
annexed to the generous endowment conferred on them 
by the Hon. Judge Perkins of "The Oaks," near Colum- 
bus, Miss., added to the existing departments of instruc- 
tion in the Seminary, a chair to be entitled "The Perkins 



424 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



Professorship of Natural Science in Connection with 
Revelation; the design of which shall be to evince the 
harmony of science with the records of our faith, and to 
refute the objections of infidel naturalists." Well do I 
remember the extreme delight with which Dr. Thornwell 
welcomed this addition to our Seminary course of instruc- 
tion, how T highly he appreciated the service done the Sem- 
inary at Columbia by the Rev. Dr. J. A. Lyon, the pastor 
of the venerable Judge Perkins, in assisting him to give 
the precise description of the object to which his munifi- 
cent endowment was to be applied. Dr. Thornwell did 
not share at all in the apprehensions expressed by Dr. 
Dabney, that the instructions of such a chair must have "a 
tendency towards naturalistic and anti-Christian opin- 
ions." He threw himself with the greatest ardor into as- 
sisting the endeavors of the Board of Directors to perfect 
the arrangements respecting this new chair. 

It fell first to the Synod of Georgia to choose the in- 
cumbent of this new chair, and they voted to place in it 
the Rev. James Woodrow, A. M., and in due time his 
election was confirmed by the other associated Synods of 
Alabama and South Carolina. Thus it came about that 
his inaugural was not delivered until November 22, 1861, 
at the succeeding meeting of the Synod of Georgia in the 
town of Marietta. It was delivered, however, not to the 
Synod, but to the Board of Directors of the Seminary, 
and for the purpose of obtaining their official counsel as 
to the discharge of his new duties. 

The Inaugural Address. 

The newly elected professor began his inaugural by 
expressing his Oppressive sense of responsibility and self 
distrust." These feelings were increased by the fact that 
he was called to organize an entirely new department of 
instruction without a single similar chair in any theolog- 
ical school either in America or Europe to serve as a 
model," the chair of Natural Science in the New (Theo- 
logical) College of the Free Church of Scotland, at Edin- 
burgh, "forming no exception, because of the great differ- 
ence of design in the two chairs." The task assigned Pro- 
fessor Woodrow was all the more difficult on account of 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



425 



the various and even conflicting views which prevailed 
respecting its nature, and the brief and somewhat indefi- 
nite instructions given him in the resolutions of the three 
synods. He was therefore glad of the "opportunity to 
present his own views of what they had given him to do r 
and of the mode and spirit in which it ought to be done, 
so that, if he had not mistaken their design, he might go 
forward the more confidently; but that if he had misap- 
prehended it, he might have the benefit of their counsels, 
and their instructions in changing, restricting, or extend- 
ing his plans." 

The Professor went on to say that the general de- 
sign was evident enough, and then to set forth three dif- 
ferent methods in which, as he supposed, it might be exe- 
cuted : 

"First, the harmony may be evinced by showing that 
science proves the existence of God, and that he has at- 
tributes identical, as far as nature reveals them, with such 
as are ascribed to him in his word. 

"Secondly, the harmony may be evinced by observing 
the analogy which subsists between nature and revelation 
in other respects than those which it belongs to natural 
theology to consider. 

"Thirdly, it may be the design of the professorship to 
evince the harmony only where it has been doubted or 
denied, or where opinions prevailing among scientific men 
either are or are supposed to be inconsistent with our 
sacred records ; in other words, to scrutinize the nature 
and the force of current and popular objections to the 
scriptures ; to meet them, and to set them aside by prov- 
ing that they spring either from science falsely so-called, 
or from incorrect interpretations of the words of the Holy 
Bible. This would involve a careful study of the funda- 
mental principles of the various branches of science from 
which the objections are drawn, and of their details car- 
ried far enough to enable one to judge correctly of the 
amount of truth in each objection. It would involve fur- 
ther the careful study of the principles of biblical inter- 
pretation as far as these relate to the mode in which the 
works of God are spoken of. The comparison of the re- 
sults obtained thus, if the processes have been properly 



426 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



conducted, must inevitably evince entire harmony, or, at 
least, the entire absence of discord." 

The Professor said he regarded this last as the field 
on which most labor was to be expended; not that the 
first two are to be wholly neglected. And if this be the 
correct view of the field set before him, it will be proper 
to look more into the details and state some of the points 
of supposed antagonism between science and the scrip- 
tures. 

1. It is affirmed as explicit teaching of scripture that 
the whole material universe was brought out of absolute 
non-existence not quite six thousand years ago ; from the 
first beginning of creation till the first human being not 
quite six days elapsed. On the other hand it is held that 
the earth had been in existence during immense and im- 
measurable periods of time prior to the creation of the 
first living being that has left any trace on the earth. In- 
timately connected is the question relating to the intro- 
duction of death. Was there death before Adam's sin \ 
Was death, millions of ages previously, connected with 
the first sin of man % One side denies ; others think 
scripture affirms that death was utterly unknown before 
the fall. 

Then there are opposite views respecting the ^oachian 
deluge. 

The unity of the human race is another point of an- 
tagonism. 

2. Other branches of knowledge come under the con- 
sideration of this chair because they have some connection 
with natural science and its controversy with the Bible, 
or at least they are so regarded in the popular mind. 
Egypt and her monuments ; the antiquity of the Chinese 
and the Hindoos and other Eastern nations belong to this 
class. The established chronology of these nations, it is 
claimed, sets aside by irrefragable proofs that of the He- 
brew Scriptures as entirely worthless, the fabrication of 
some modern sciolist. While it is held by many students 
of the Bible that man was created less than six thousand 
years ago, in opposition to this we are told that man has 
been in existence not less than thirty thousand to one hun- 
dred thousand years, and that this has been proved by the 



COXTEOVEKSIES OF SCIEXCE. 



427 



archaeological monuments and the authentic chronology 
of many nations, no less than by geology and palaeon- 
tology. 

The Professor went on to say that such were some of 
the questions showing the nature of all which it would 
be his duty to discuss before the Seminary classes. But 
what is the method to be pursued and in what spirit are 
these investigations to be carried on, and what results may 
be anticipated ? Evidently "it will be impossible to ascer- 
tain whether science and revelation agree or disagree 
without an intimate acquaintance with both, as far as they 
are to be compared. To gain this, then, would seem to be 
the first thing to be done. AYhile thus engaged the most 
untrammelled freedom of inquiry must be allowed ; and 
on both classes of subjects our decisions must be regulated 
by their proper evidence. In this preliminary investiga- 
tion we must neither be governed in our views of natural 
science by what we may have believed to be taught in the 
Bible ; nor, on the other hand, must we do violence to the 
words of the Bible under the influence of our belief in 
any supposed teachings of science. There must be the 
most unbiassed readiness to accept as truth whatever is 
proved. And yet, at the same time that we advance with 
the fullest liberty, it should be with the profoundest hu- 
mility and distrust of our own powers, joined with the 
deepest reverence for all that God makes known to us 
both in his works and in his word. Under the influence 
of such feelings, and proceeding with the firm conviction 
that truth, like its Author, is one, we can hardly fail to 
make progress in all attainable knowledge ; while we will 
be kept from the folly of believing that there are real 
inconsistencies, demonstrating error on one side or other, 
merely because we have not succeeded in comprehending 
the actual mode in which the different sections of the 
truth are related to each other. Believing firmly and cor- 
dially that every part of the Bible is the very word of 
God, and that, therefore, every part of it is absolutely true 
in the sense in which it was the design of its real author, 
the Holy Spirit, that it should be understood, I also 
firmly believe that nothing will be found inconsistent 
with it in the established teachings of natural science as 



428 



MY LIFE A~N~D TIMES. 



it is expounded by its own votaries, and as its propositions 
are determined according to its own laws of investigation. 
Contradiction would necessarily imply a want of truth 
somewhere ; but this, I think it may be made to appear 
by the most rigorous reasoning, does not exist. And in all 
cases where there are still unadjusted apparent differ- 
ences, which it must be admitted do exist, it can be shown 
that it is infinitely more probable that they result from 
imperfect understanding of the meaning of the word, or 
of the bearing of the scientific truth, or both, than from 
any real inconsistency. There are independent proposi- 
tions in intellectual and moral science, and even in the- 
ology, which are seemingly inconsistent and almost con- 
tradictory ; and yet we never think of abandoning our 
belief in any of them, if each stands on a firm basis of its 
own. In no case do the imperfectly understood relations 
under consideration present more serious difficulties than 
these, and very seldom as serious. I further believe that 
there is no seeming discrepancy where the denial of the 
truth on either side would not involve vastly more per- 
plexing embarrassment than its reception on both. We 
have nothing to fear for the records of our faith from the 
freest examination in every direction. Let antiquity be 
searched ; let the created universe be scrutinized, as far 
as the human intellect so gifted by its Creator can reach ; 
though in the process we shall see many errors which have 
clung around our own minds, and which may have pre- 
vented our seeing the meaning of the divine word, still 
that word will derive continually new lustre from every 
advance in knowledge, and unbelievers will at each step 
be more and more without excuse for their irrational 
doubts." 

Of the concluding parts of the inaugural this may be 
considered the sum : the Professor believes and will teach 
that there are no errors in nature ; none in the Bible, the 
original text being given. He holds the absolute iner- 
rancy of the text in the book of nature, and the very same 
of the book of revelation, there being given the true in- 
terpretation of the former and the true interpretation of 
the latter. Thus provided we cannot have any conflict, 
for all truth, like its Author, is one. Therefore, if there 



CONTKOVEESIES OF SCIENCE. 



429 



be any variance, there must be (1) false text or (2) false 
interpretation of nature or of scripture, one or both, or 
possibly only a false inference from some truth in nature 
or some truth in revelation. Adjust these — false text, or 
false interpretation, or false inference — and the supposed 
lack of harmony vanishes. 

This inaugural address most probably, although im- 
mediately published in the Southern Presbyterian Review 
of January, 1862, attracted very little attention. The 
war had just begun and both the Professor and his stu- 
dents were very soon in its service, as well as many of the 
ministers of our church. Had it been otherwise, had our 
ministers, elders, and other intelligent members of the 
church generally, become possessed of the Professor's 
views and duly considered them, possibly there had arisen 
no evolution controversy. There can be no falsehoods in 
the book of nature, said the Professor, and there can be 
none in the book of revelation. If only both be correctly 
understood, they cannot contradict each other, for they 
have one author. Both, however, present mysteries, many 
of them insoluble by us. Both deserve at our hands the 
most humble, reverent, patient and laborious investiga- 
tion, and "there must be allowed to any who would com- 
pare them together in the fear of God who gave them, un- 
trammelled freedom of inquiry. We must neither be 
governed in our views of natural science by what we may 
have understood to have been taught in the Bible ; nor, on 
the other hand, must we do violence to the words of the 
Bible under the influence of our acceptance of any sup- 
posed teachings of science. There must be the most un- 
biassed readiness to accept as truth whatever is unques- 
tionably proved." These views were just and true as put 
forth at Marietta, Ga., a quarter of a century ago, and 
w T ould have been useful if well understood then and after- 
wards. They are just and true now. 

But in proportion as the views of Darwin and some 
other students of physical science like Darwin came to 
attract the attention of intelligent men amongst us, min- 
isters and elders who had not seen or read what had been 
set forth by Dr. Woodrow in his inaugural began to in- 
quire into the bearing of the new physical science upon a 



430 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



number of doctrines which they had always supposed to be 
taught in the Bible. Moreover, as a professor at Colum- 
bia Theological Seminary had been set apart especially to 
make a study of physical science in its relations with rev- 
elation, it was very natural that there should arise a cu- 
riosity amongst our people to know what this professor 
would have to say about evolution, which was one of the 
questions which had recently arisen in the progress of 
scientific discovery. An open and straightforward de- 
mand for the publication of his views would have been 
perfectly legitimate and altogether suitable and becoming. 
It is just here that we reach the circumstances which gave 
rise to the evolution controversy in our church. I pro- 
ceed, therefore, to set them forth upon evidence which 
cannot be questioned. It is taken from the records of the 
Board of Directors. 

"At a meeting of the board on September 16 and 17, 1884 r 
the following communication from Professor James Woodrow was 
read, and the board went into a committee of the whole to con- 
sider it: 

"Theological Semixary, Columbia, September 16, 1884. 
"To the Board of Directors of the Theological Seminary of the Synod 
of South Carolina and Georgia. 

"Gextlemex : In the autumn of 1882 your report to the Synods 
contained certain expressions touching evolution which led me to 
regard it as my duty to take the earliest possible opportunity to call 
your attention specially to my instructions on that subject in the 
class-room, although 1 had already frequently done so at the suc- 
cessive annual examinations. Accordingly, at your next meeting, in 
May, 1883, I laid before you a brief statement as to the views held 
and taught by me. Thereupon, after receiving this brief statement 
that evolution does not contradict the Sacred Scriptures, etc., you 
did me the honor to request me to give my views more fully on this- 
topic, and to publish them in the Southern Presbyterian Review, 
since 'scepticism in the world is using alleged discoveries in science 
to impugn the word of God.' 

"I have acceded to your request, and beg leave now to submit to 
you a copy of the article which I have published in accordance 
with it. 

"Yours very respectfully, James Woodrow, 

"Perkins Professor, etc.' r 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE, 



431 



Here is tlie paragraph which contained the expressions, 
in the board's report of 1882, alluded to in the above letter 
of the Professor : 

"We bring you tidings of great joy, for our beloved Seminary, 
after being closed for two years, was reopened on September 14th. 
This should be a subject of rejoicing to the whole church, for it is 
no unimportant matter in these days, when there is so much defec- 
tion, even in theological seminaries, that our Southern Zion should 
have another institution, manned by those who are able and apt to 
teach the Westminster standards, and who are too honest to secretly 
impugn the verbal inspiration of any part of the original Scriptures, 
or to covertly teach evolution and other insidious errors that under- 
mine the foundations of our precious faith." 

The Address on Evolution. 

Here, then, I introduce in as condensed a form as I can 
the address, just referred to, by the Perkins Professor. 
It was delivered on the 7th of May, 1884, to the Alumni 
Association and the Board of Directors. It was then pub- 
lished in the July number of the Southern Presbyterian 
Review of that year, and it will be found in full in Vol. 
XXXV. of said Review. After referring to the joint 
request of the two bodies named which had called for this 
address, the Professor chose before entering on the dis- 
cussion of the specific subject of evolution in itself, and 
in its relations to the sacred scriptures, to consider the 
relations subsisting between the teachings of the scrip- 
tures and the teachings of natural science generally. 
u Was it antecedently probable that there is room for 
either agreement or disagreement ? We do not speak of 
the harmony between mathematics and chemistry or be- 
tween zoology and astronomy, or the reconciliation of 
physics and metaphysics. Why? Because the subject 
matter of each of these branches of knowledge is so dif- 
ferent from the rest. We may say that some assertion 
made by astronomy cannot be correct because it contra- 
dicts some known truth of mathematics or physics. But 
yet in such case we would not proceed to look for harmony 
or reconciliation ; we would confine ourselves to the task 
of removing the contradiction by seeking the error which 
caused it, and which it proved to exist ; for we know that, 
as truth is one, two contradictories cannot both be true. 



482 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



"May it not be that we have here a representation of 
the probable relations between the Bible and science, that 
the contents are so entirely different that it is vain and 
misleading to be searching for harmonies ; and that we 
should confine our efforts to the examination of real or 
seeming contradictions which may emerge, and rest satis- 
fied without attempting to go further, when we have dis- 
covered that there is no contradiction if it was only seem- 
ing, or have pointed out the error that caused it if real ?" 

The Professor now tests what he has said by special 
cases which once caused trouble, but have now been satis- 
factorily disposed of. For example, the difficulty with 
astronomy growing out of Genesis i. 16; Joshua x. 13. 
He then quotes Calvin, "Moses does not speak with philo- 
sophical acuteness on occult mysteries, but relates those 
things which are everywhere observed, even by the un- 
cultivated. . . . He who would learn astronomy and 
other recondite arts let him go elsewhere." And he adds : 

"Calvin's belief in the geocentric system no more in- 
terfered with his confidence in the Bible than does our 
belief in the heliocentric system interfere with our con- 
fidence in the same sure word." 

The Professor's next illustration is from geography. 
For centuries geographers taught as science that which 
was claimed to be in perfect accord with the Bible in pas- 
sages which speak of four winds, four corners, four quar- 
ters of the earth. So the Bible and science were thus 
found to confirm each other. At last it was discovered 
that neither the Bible nor natural phenomena set forth 
what had been supposed. The Bible taught nothing about 
the shape of the earth and the phenomena of the earth dis- 
proved its being a four-cornered, immovable plain. So 
in other cases. All this from the past proves that "the 
Bible does not teach science ; and to take its language in 
a scientific sense is grossly to pervert its meaning." Yet 
the Professor insists the language of the Bible in all these 
cases does "express the exact truth." When, for example, 
it says that the sun rises, sun sets, sun stood still in Gib- 
eon, it "conveys exactly the thought intended." If so, 
then there is no ground for saying that these expressions 
iire "inaccurate." A phenomenal truth is as much a truth 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



433 



.as is the so-called scientific explanation of it. Science 
deals almost exclusively with the "explanation" of phe- 
nomena, hnt the Bible speaks of natural phenomena for 
their own sake, and never for the sake of their explana- 
tion or their scientific relations to each other. These 
principles admitted, many difficulties at once disappear. 
For example, the Bible (Lev. xi. and Deut. xiv.) classes 
coney and hare as animals that chew the cud; the bat 
amongst birds ; the locust, the beetle and the grasshopper 
as flying creeping things that go upon all four. If these 
are to be regarded as "scientific," then we have a "sad 
batch of blunders." But in the sense intended — to de- 
scribe phenomena addressed to the eye — they are "cor- 
rectly used." "We understand by 'chewing the cud' 
bringing back into the mouth, for the purpose of being 
chewed, food which had been previously swallowed; but 
if those to whom the words in question were addressed 
understood by them that motion of the mouth which ac- 
companies chewing, then they would recognize by this 
motion the hare and the coney as rightly characterized. 
So with the bat : in a scientific sense it is not a bird ; it is 
a mammal ; hence if we are teaching natural history we 
would grievously err in making such a classification. But 
in describing flying things which do not creep, the bat 
was rightly placed where it is. Two years ago the Legis- 
lature of South Carolina enacted that 'it shall not be law- 
ful for any person ... to destroy any bird whose 
principal food is insects, . . . comprising all the va- 
rieties of birds represented by the several families of 
bats, whip-poor-wills . . . humming-birds, blue- 
birds/ etc. Does this law prove that the legislature did 
not know that the bat in a natural history sense is not a 
bird ? They were not undertaking to teach zoology ; they 
wished to point out the flying animals whose principal 
food is insects, and with all propriety and accuracy they 
did it. So 'going on all four' when used in reference to 
the motion of animals may fairly be taken as applying to 
the prone position of the animal which is common to the 
quadruped and the insect, and not at all to the number of 
feet. In this sense the phrase with perfect accuracy ap- 
plies to the horizontal position of the locust and other 



434 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



insects ; while the important natural history fact that 
the insect has six feet, and not four, is perfectly imma- 
terial." 

In all these cases, as the Professor points out, no con- 
tradiction is to be found, but we cannot say that there is 
any harmony here. Then he demands, "Is it not point- 
edly suggested by these instances that any exposition of 
scripture which seems to show that natural science is 
taught, is thereby proved to be incorrect ? For this reason 
I am strongly inclined to disbelieve the popular interpre- 
tations of the first chapter of Genesis which find there a 
compendium of the science of geology." "So in all other- 
cases of supposed contradiction of the Bible by science, I 
have found that the fair, honest application of such prin- 
ciples has caused the contradiction to disappear. I have 
found nothing in my study of the holy Bible and of nat- 
ural science that shakes my firm belief in the divine in- 
spiration of every word of that Bible, and in the conse- 
quent absolute truth, the absolute inerraney, of every ex- 
pression which it contains, from beginning to end. While 
there are not a few things which I confess myself wholly 
unable to understand, yet I have found nothing which 
contradicts other known truth. It ought to be observed 
that this is a very different thing from saying that I have 
found everything in the sacred scriptures to be in har- 
mony with natural science. To reach this result it would 
be necessary to know the exact meaning of every part of 
the scriptures, and the exact amount of truth in each 
scientific proposition. But to show that in any case there 
is no contradiction, all that is needed is to show that a 
reasonable supposition of what the passage in question 
may mean does not contradict the proved truth in science. 
We do not need to show that our interpretation must be' 
correct, but only that it may be correct — that it is not 
reached by distortion or perversion, but by an honest ap- 
plication of admitted principles of exegesis. 

"It should be noted that the matters respecting which 
there are supposed to be inconsistencies between the teach- 
ings of science and the Bible, are such as cannot possibly 
directly aff ect any moral or religious truth ; but that they 
derive their importance to the Christian believer solelV 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



from the bearing they may have on the truthfulness of 
the scriptures. In the name of Christianity, belief in the 
existence of people living on the other side of the earth 
has been denounced as absurd and heretical; but how is 
any moral duty or any doctrine of religion affected by 
this belief ? unless, indeed, it may be from doubt it may 
cast upon the truthfulness of the Bible. And with this 
exception, what difference can it make with regard to any 
relation between ourselves and our fellowmen or between 
ourselves and God and the Lord Jesus Christ whether the 
earth came into existence six thousand years ago or six 
thousand million years ago; whether the earth is flat or 
round ; whether it is the centre of the universe or on its 
edge ; whether there has been one creation or many ; 
whether the ^sToachian deluge covered a million or two- 
hundred million square miles ; and last of all I may add, 
whether the species of organic beings now on the earth 
were created mediately or immediately ? 

"After these preliminary observations, I proceed to dis- 
cuss the main subject of this address. Before answering 
the question, what do you think of evolution ? I must ask, 
what do you mean by evolution V 

''When thinking of the origin of anything, we may in- 
quire, did it come into existence just as it is % or did it 
pass through a series of changes from a previous state in 
order to reach its present condition ? For example, if we 
think of a tree, we can conceive of it as having come im- 
mediately into existence just as we see it; or we may 
conceive of it as having begun its existence as a minute- 
cell in connection with a similar tree, and as having 
reached its present condition by passing through a series 
of changes, continually approaching and at length reach- 
ing the form before us. Or, thinking of the earth, we can 
conceive of it as having come into existence with its pres- 
ent complex character ; or we may conceive of it as having 
begun to exist in the simplest possible state, and as having 
reached its present condition by passing through a long 
series of stages, each derived from its predecessor. To 
the second of these modes, we apply the term evolution. 
It is evidently equivalent to derivation ; or in the case of 
organic beings, to descent. 



436 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



"This definition or description of evolution does not in- 
clude any reference to the power by which the origination 
is effected ; it refers to the mode, and to the mode alone. 
So far as the definition is concerned, the immediate exist- 
ence might be attributed to God or to chance ; the derived 
existence to inherent uncreated law, or to an almighty 
personal Creator, acting according to laws of his own 
framing. It is important to consider this distinction 
carefully, for it is wholly inconsistent with much that is 
said and believed by both advocates and opponents of evo- 
lution. It is not unusual to represent creation and evolu- 
tion as mutually exclusive, as contradictory: creation, 
meaning the immediate calling out of non-existence by 
divine power ; evolution, derivation from previous forms 
or states by inherent, self-originated or eternal laws, in- 
dependent of all connection with divine personal power. 
Hence, if this is correct, those who believe in creation are 
theists ; those who believe in evolution are atheists. But 
there is no propriety in thus mingling in the definition 
two things which are so completely different as the power 
that produces an effect, and the mode in which the effect 
is produced. 

"The definition now given, which seems to me the only 
one which can be given within the limits of natural 
science, necessarily excludes the possibility of the ques- 
tions whether the doctrine is theistic or atheistic, whether 
it is religious or irreligious, moral or immoral. It would 
be as plainly absurd to ask these questions as to inquire 
whether the doctrine is white or black, square or round, 
light or heavy. In this respect it is like every other 
hypothesis or theory in science. These are qualities which 
do not belong to such subjects. The only question that 
•can rationally be put is, Is the doctrine true or false ? If 
this statement is correct — and it is almost if not quite self- 
evident — it should at once end all disputes, not only be- 
tween evolution and religion, but between natural science 
and religion universally. To prove that the universe, the 
earth, and the organic beings upon the earth had once 
been in a different condition from the present, and had 
gradually reached the state which we now see, could not 
disprove or tend to disprove the existence of God or the 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



437 



possession by him of a single attribute ever thought to be- 
long to him. How can our belief in this doctrine tend to 
weaken or destroy our belief that he is infinite, that he is 
eternal, that he is unchangeable in his being, or his wis- 
dom, or his power, or his holiness, or his justice, or his 
goodness, or his truth ? Or how can our rejection of the 
doctrine either strengthen or weaken our belief in him ? 
Or how can either our acceptance or rejection of evolu- 
tion affect our love to God, or our recognition of our obli- 
gation to obey and serve him — carefully to keep all his 
commandments and ordinances ? 

"True, when we go outside the sphere of natural 
science and inquire whence this universe, questions in- 
volving theism forthwith arise. Whether it came into 
existence immediately or mediately is not material ; but 
what or who brought it into existence ? Did it spring from 
the fortuitous concurrence of eternally existing atoms '? 
Are the matter and the forces which act upon it in certain 
definite ways eternal ; and is the universe, as we behold 
it, the result of their blind, unconscious operation ? Or, 
on the other hand, was the universe in all its orderly com- 
plexity brought into existence by the will of an eternal 
personal spiritual God, one who is omniscient, omni- 
present, omnipotent \ These questions, of course, involve 
the very foundations of religion and morality ; but they 
lie wholly outside of natural science ; and are, I repeat, 
not in the least affected by the decision of that other ques- 
tion, did the universe come into its present condition im- 
mediately or mediately ; instantly, in a moment, or grad- 
ually, through a long series of intermediate stages ? They 
are not affected by, nor do they affect, the truth or false- 
hood of evolution. 

"But, admitting that the truth of theism is not involved 
in the question before us, it may fairly be asked, does not 
the doctrine of evolution contradict the teachings of the 
Bible ? This renders it necessary to inquire whether the 
Bible teaches anything whatever as to the mode in which 
the world and its inhabitants were brought into their 
present state ; and if so, what that teaching is. 

"It does not seem to be antecedently probable that there 
would be any specific teaching there on the subject. We 



438 



MY LIFE AID TIMES. 



have learned that 'the scriptures principally teach what 
man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God re- 
quires of man' ; and that 'the whole counsel of God con- 
cerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's sal- 
vation^ faith, and life, is either expressly set down in scrip- 
ture, or by good and necessary consequence may be de- 
duced from scripture.' But this does not include the 
principles of natural science in any of its branches. We 
have already seen that it certainly does not include the 
teaching of astronomy or of geography ; it does not in- 
clude anatomy or physiology, zoology or botany — a scien- 
tific statement of the structure, growth, and classification 
of animals and plants. Is it any more likely that it in- 
cludes an account of the limits of the variation which the 
kinds of plants and animals may undergo, or the circum- 
stances and conditions by which such variation may be 
affected ? We would indeed expect to find God's relation 
to the world and all its inhabitants set forth ; but he is 
equally the Creator and Preserver, however it may have 
pleased him, through his creating and preserving power, 
to have brought the universe into its present state. He is 
as really and truly your Creator, though you are the de- 
scendant of hundreds of ancestors, as he was of the first 
particle of matter which he called into being, or the first 
plant or animal, or the first angel in heaven. 

"So much at least seems clear — that whatever the Bible 
may say touching the mode of creation, is merely inciden- 
tal to its main design, and must be interpreted accord- 
ingly. Well may we repeat with Calvin, 'He who would 
learn astronomy and other recondite arts, let him go else- 
where.' 

"It is further to be observed that whatever may be 
taught is contained in the first part of the oldest book in 
the world, in a dead language, with a very limited litera- 
ture ; that the record is extremely brief, compressing an 
account of the most stupendous events into the smallest 
compass. Xow the more remote from the present is any 
event recorded in human language, the more completely 
any language deserves to be called dead, the more limited 
its contemporaneous literature, the briefer the record it- 
self, the more obscure must that record be — the more dif- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



439 



ficult it must be to ascertain its exact meaning, and espe- 
cially that part of its meaning which, is merely incidental 
to its main design. As to the portions which bear on that 
design, the obscurity will be illuminated by the light cast 
•backwards from the later and fuller and clearer parts of 
the Bible. But on that with which we are now specially 
concerned no such light is likely to fall. 

"To illustrate this point I may refer to other parts of 
this early record. In the account of the temptation of 
Eve we have a circumstantial and apparently very plain 
description of the being that tempted her. It was a ser- 
pent ; and we read that the serpent was more subtile than 
any beast of the field. Further, it was a beast which was 
to go upon its belly, and whose head could be bruised. 
Surely, it might be said, it is perfectly plain that the 
record should cause us to believe that it was a mere beast 
of the field, a mere serpent, that tempted Eve. But to 
narrate the fall of man is not simply incidental to the de- 
sign of the Bible ; on the contrary, its chief design may 
be said to be to record that fall and to show how man may 
recover from it. Hence from the later parts of the Bible 
we learn that the tempter was no beast of the field, as 
seems to be so clearly stated ; but it was 'the dragon, that 
old serpent, which is the devil, even Satan,' whatever may 
have been the guise in which he appeared to our first 
mother. 

"Then from the sentence pronounced upon the serpent, 
c l will put enmity between thee and the woman, and be- 
tween thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, 
and thou shalt bruise his heel' ; from this it would seem to 
be clear that what we are here taught, and all that we are 
here taught, is that the woman's son was to crush the head 
of the beast, whilst his own heel would be bruised; 
whereas we learn from books which come after, that this 
sentence really contains the germ of the entire plan of 
salvation; and that the woman's son who was to bruise 
the serpent's head at such cost to himself is Jesus the 
Saviour, who on Calvary through his death destroyed 
'him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.' Xow 
since in these cases, where the meaning seems to be so un- 
mistakably clear, and where the subject matter belongs to 



440 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



the main design of the book, and yet where the real mean- 
ing is so entirely different, as we learn from the later 
scriptures, how cautious we should be not to feel too con- 
fident that we have certainly reached the true meaning in 
cases where the subject matter is merely incidental, and 
where no light falls back from the later scriptures to guide 
us aright ! 

"The actual examination of the sacred record seems to 
me to show that the obscurity exists which might have 
been reasonably anticipated. It is clear that God is there 
represented as doing whatever is done. But whether in 
this record the limitless universe to the remotest star or 
nebula is spoken of , or only some portion of it, and if the 
latter, what portion, I cannot tell. And if there is an ac- 
count of the methods according to which God proceeded in 
his creative work, I cannot perceive it. It is said that 
God created ; but, so far as I can see, it is not said how 
he created. We are told nothing that contradicts the sup- 
position, for example, that in creating our earth and the 
solar system of which it forms a part, he brought the 
whole into existence very much in the condition in which 
we now see the several parts ; or, on the other hand, that 
he proceeded by the steps indicated in what is called the 
nebular hypothesis. Just as the contrary beliefs of Cal- 
vin and ourselves touching the centre of the solar system 
fail to contradict a single word in the Bible, so the con- 
trary beliefs of those who accept and those who reject the 
nebular hvpothesis fail to contradict a single word of the 
Bible. 

"I regard the same statements as true when made re- 
specting the origin of the almost numberless species of 
organic beings which now exist and which have existed in 
the past. In the Bible I find nothing that contradicts the 
belief that God immediately brought into existence each 
form independently ; or that contradicts the contrary be- 
lief that, having originated one or a few forms, he caused 
all the others to spring from these in accordance with 
laws which he ordained and makes operative. 

"If that which is perhaps the most commonly received 
interpretation of the biblical record of creation is correct, 
then it is certain that the Bible implicitly yet distinctly 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



teaches the doctrine of evolution. According to this in- 
terpretation, the record contains an account of the first 
and only origination of plants and animals, and all that 
exist now or that have existed from the beginning are 
their descendants. If, then, we have the means of ascer- 
taining the characteristics of these ancestors of existing 
kinds," we can learn whether they were identical with 
their descendants or not. If the early forms were the 
same as the present, then the hypothesis of evolution or 
descent with modification is not true ; but if they were 
different, then it is true. Xow not indeed the very ear- 
liest, but great numbers of the earlier forms of animals 
and plants have been preserved to the present day buried 
in the earth, so that we can see for ourselves what they 
were. An examination of these remains makes it abso- 
lutely certain that none of the species now existing are the 
same as the earlier, but that these were wholly unlike 
those now living; and that there have been constant 
changes in progress from the remote ages of the past, the 
effect of which has been by degrees to bring the unlike 
forms of a distant antiquity into likeness with those which 
are now on the earth. Hence, all who believe that the 
creation described in the Bible was the origination of the 
ancestors of the organic forms that have since existed, can- 
not help believing in the hypothesis of evolution. This is 
so obvious that it is surprising that it has been so generally 
overlooked. 

"There seems to be no way of avoiding this conclusion, 
except by assuming that the so-called remains of animals 
and plants buried in the earth are not really remains of 
being that were once alive, but that God created them just 
as we find them. But this assumption must be rejected 
because it is inconsistent with a belief in God as a God of 
truth. It is impossible to believe that a God of truth 
would create corpses or skeletons or drift-wood or stumps. 

"If the interpretation which I have spoken of as per- 
haps most commonly received is rejected, then it may be 
thought that the Bible speaks only of the first origination 
of organic beings millions of years ago, but says nothing 
of the origin of the ancestors of those now on the earth ; 
but that it may be supposed that when one creation be- 



442 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



came extinct, there were other successive immediate in- 
dependent creations down to the beginning of the present 
era. There may be nothing in the Bible contradicting 
this supposition, but certainly there is nothing there fa- 
voring it. And if it is rejected in favor of evolution, it is 
not an interpretation of scripture that is rejected, but 
something that confessedly lies outside of it. 

"Or, in the next place, the interpretation may be 
adopted that the narrative in the Bible relates exclusively 
to the origination of existing forms, and that it is wholly 
silent respecting those of which we find the buried re- 
mains. It need hardly be said that on this interpretation, 
as in the last case, there is nothing in the silence of the 
scriptures that either suggests or forbids belief in evolu- 
tion as regards all the creations preceding the last. For 
anything that appears to the contrary, the multitudes of 
successively different forms belonging to series unmen- 
tioned in scripture may have sprung from a common 
source in accordance with the doctrine of descent with 
modification. 

"When we reach the account of the origin of man, we 
find it more detailed. In the first narrative there is noth- 
ing that suggests the mode of creating any more than in 
the case of the earth, or the plants and animals. But in 
the second we are told that 'the Lord God formed man of 
the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of life, and man became a living soul.' Here 
seems to be a definite statement utterly inconsistent with 
the belief that man, either in body or soul, is the descend- 
ant of other organized beings. At first sight the state- 
ment that 'man was formed of the dust of the ground/ 
seems to point out with unmistakable clearness the exact 
nature of the material of which man's body was made. 
But further examination does not strengthen this view. 
For remembering the principles and facts already stated, 
and seeking to ascertain the meaning of 'dust of the 
ground' by examining how the same words are employed 
elsewhere in the narrative, the sharp definiteness which 
seemed at first to be so plainly visible somewhat disap- 
pears. For example, we are told in one place that the 
waters were commanded to bring forth the moving crea- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



443 



ture that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth; 
and the command was obeyed. And yet in another place 
we are told that out of the ground the Lord God formed 
every beast of the field and every fowl of the air. Now 
as both these statements are true, it is evident that there 
can be no intention to describe the material employed. 
There was some sort of connection with the water, and 
some with the ground ; but beyond this nothing is clear. 
Then, further, in the sentence which God pronounced 
upon Adam, he says, 'Out of the ground wast thou taken; 
for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.' And 
in the curse uttered against the serpent it was said, 'Dust 
shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.' Now Adam, to 
whom God was speaking, was flesh and blood and bone ; 
and the food of serpents then as now consisted of the same 
substances, flesh and blood. The only proper conclusion 
in view of these facts seems to be that the narrative does 
not intend to distinguish in accordance with chemical 
notions different kinds of matter, specifying here inor- 
ganic in different states, and there organic, but merely to 
refer in a general incidental way to previously existing 
matter, without intending or attempting to describe its 
exact nature. For such reasons it does not seem to me 
certain that we have a definite statement which neces- 
sarily conveys the first meaning mentioned touching the 
material used in the formation of man's body. If this 
point is doubtful, there would seem to be no ground for 
attributing a different origin to man's body from that 
which should be attributed to animals ; if the existing 
animal species were immediately created, so was man ; if 
they were derived from ancestors unlike themselves, so 
may man have been. Just so far as doubt rests on the 
meaning of the narrative, just so far are we forbidden to 
say that either mode of creation contradicts the narrative. 
And as the interpretation suggested may be true, we are 
not at liberty to say that the scriptures are contradicted. 

"As regards the soul of man, which bears God's image, 
and which differs so entirely not merely in degree, but in 
kind from anything in the animals, I believe that it was 
immediately created, that we are here so taught ; and I 
have not found in science any reason to believe otherwise. 



444 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



Just as there is no scientific basis for the belief that the 
doctrine of derivation or descent can bridge over the 
chasms which separate the non-existent from the existent, 
and the inorganic from the organic, so there is no such 
basis for the belief that this doctrine can bridge over the 
chasm which separates the mere animal from the exalted 
being which is made after the image of God. The min- 
eral differs from the animal in kind, not merely in de- 
gree ; so the animal differs from man in kind ; and while 
science has traced numberless transitions from degree to 
degree, it has utterly failed to find any indications of 
transition from kind to kind in this sense. So in the cir- 
cumstantial account of the creation of the first woman 
there are what seem to me insurmountable obstacles in 
the way of fully applying the doctrine of descent. 

"But it is not surprising that, even if evolution is gen- 
erally true, it should not be true of man in his whole be- 
ing. Man, as the image of God, is infinitely above the 
animals ; and in man's entire history God has continually 
been setting aside the ordinary operation of the laws by 
which he controls his creation. For man's sake, the 
course of the sun in the heavens was stayed ; the walls of 
Jericho fell down at the sound of the trumpets ; manna 
ordinarily decayed in one day, but resisted decay for two 
days when one of these was the day of man's sacred rest ; 
for man's sake the waters of the Red Sea and of the river 
Jordan stood upright as an heap ; iron was made to swim ; 
women received their dead raised to life again ; the 
mouths of lions were stopped ; the violence of fire was 
quenched ; water was turned into wine ; without medi- 
cine the blind saw, the lame walked, the lepers were 
cleansed, the dead were raised ; more than all, and above 
all, for man's sake God himself took on him our nature as 
the second Adam by being born of a woman, underwent 
the miseries of this life, the cursed death of the cross; 
was buried; he rose again on the third day, ascended 
into heaven, whence, as both God and man, he shall come 
to judge the world at the last day. Surely then, I repeat, 
it is not surprising that, though man in his body so closely 
resembles the animals, yet as a whole his origin as well 
as his history should be so different from theirs. 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



445 



"Having now pointed out the probable absence of con- 
tradiction between the scripture account of creation and 
the doctrine of evolution, except in the case of man so far 
as regards his soul, but without having at all considered 
the probable truth or falsehood of evolution, I proceed 
next, as briefly as possible, to state a few of the facts which 
seem to be sufficient at least to keep us from summarily 
rejecting the doctrine as certainly false. 

"First; as to the earth in connection with the other 
members of our solar system. 

"'Some inquirers into the past history of this system 
have been led to suppose that at one time the whole of the 
matter now composing the various separate bodies may 
have existed in a nebulous state, forming a vast sphere 
with a diameter far exceeding that of the orbit of Xep- 
tune, the outermost planet ; that this sphere rotated about 
its axis, and that it was undergoing gradual contraction. 
If there ever was such a sphere, it is claimed by some of 
those who have most carefully studied these subjects that, 
in accordance with the laws bv which God is now govern- 
mg his material works, just such a solar system as ours 
would necessarily have resulted. As the sphere con- 
tracted, the nebulous matter would become more dense, 
and the rate of rotation would increase and would thereby 
increase the centrifugal force, so that at length a belt or 
ring would be thrown off from the equatorial region of the 
sphere; which belt might continue to rotate as an un- 
broken mass, or if broken, would be collected by the laws 
of attraction into a spheroidal body, which would rotate 
upon its own axis, and would also continue to revolve in 
a path around the axis of the whole mass, both these rev- 
olutions being in the same direction, the axis of the new 
spheroid being not far from parallel with the general axis, 
and the orbit of revolution being not far from parallel 
with the plane of the general equator. This process would 
be repeated from time to time, new belts or spheroids with 
the same characteristics being successively formed. So 
from each of these spheroids, as it continued to contract, 
similar secondary spheroids might be successively formed, 
each assuming a shape determined by the rate of rotation' 
At a certain stage in the cooling 'the nebulous matter 



446 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



would become a liquid molten mass, ultimately solid. As 
the solid spheroid cooled still more it would still continue 
to contract, but unequally in the interior and on the ex- 
terior, and thus the surface would be covered with suc- 
cessively formed wrinkles or ridges. 

"Now in every particular, with very slight exception, 
the constitution of our solar system and our earth is 
exactly such as has just been described. It consists of a 
number of spheroids, each rotating on its own axis, and 
revolving around a central mass ; and around the several 
primary spheroids are others which rotate on their axes, 
and revolve around their primaries as these do around 
the sun, all having a form determined by the rate of rota- 
tion ; the primaries or planets all rotate on axes nearly 
parallel with the axis of the sun; the planes of their 
orbits of revolution nearly coincide with the equatorial 
plane of the sun ; these revolutions and rotations are all 
in the same direction ; in the case of Saturn, in addition 
to revolving satellites, are revolving belts or rings. Com- 
ing to our earth, it exhibits the plainest marks of having 
once been in a molten state ; the great mountain chains, 
which certainly have been formed during successive 
periods, are just such as would be formed by the wrink- 
ling of the earth's crust caused by unequal contraction. 
Hence it would seem not unreasonable to conclude that 
if the nebular hypothesis has not been proved to be cer- 
tainly true, it has at least been shown to be probable. The 
number and variety of coincidences between the facts 
which we see, and the necessary results of the supposition 
on which the nebular hypothesis is founded are so very 
great, that it must go far to produce the conviction that 
that supposition can hardly be wrong. As before inti- 
mated, the correspondence is not perfect, but the excep- 
tions are not such as to disprove the hypothesis ; they are 
merely the residual phenomena, which in the case of even 
the most firmly established principles await a full explan- 
ation. 

"If it should be objected that as this scheme rests on a 
mere supposition no part of the superstructure can be 
stronger than the foundation, and that therefore it must 
be supposition and nothing more throughout, I would say 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



447 



that this objection rests on a misapprehension of the na- 
ture of reasoning on such subjects. Let us examine, by 
way of illustration, the method by which the truth of the 
doctrine of gravitation was established. At first it was 
the gravitation hypothesis merely. Xewton formed the 
supposition that the heavenly bodies are drawn towards 
each other by the same force which draws bodies towards 
each other on the earth. He calculated what the motions 
of the moon and the plants should be if this supposition is 
correct. After many efforts he found that many of these 
motions were nearly what his supposition would require. 
Even the first observed coincidence was a step towards 
proving the truth of his hypothesis ; and as these coin- 
cidences multiplied, his conviction of its truth was in- 
creased, until at length he and all who took the trouble to 
become acquainted with the facts of the case believed with 
the utmost confidence that it was absolutely true. But 
even w r hen this conviction w T as reached, there were still 
many phenomena which !NTewton could not explain on his 
hypothesis ; but these residual phenomena, formidable as 
they were, did not shake his confidence, and should not 
have done so. J^ow if Newton's gravitation hypothesis 
was entitled to his confidence on account of the number 
and variety of coincidences, notwithstanding the appa- 
rently inconsistent facts, ought not the nebular hypothesis 
to be entitled to similar confidence, provided there should 
be similar coincidences in number and variety, even 
though there remain some apparently inconsistent facts ? 
And as the gravitation hypothesis rests upon a mere sup- 
position in the same sense with the nebular hypothesis, 
ought the superstructure for that reason to be rejected in 
the one case any more than in the other \ 

"It deserves to be remarked here that after Xewton had 
framed his hypothesis he was led for years to abandon it, 
inasmuch as with the measurements of the earth on the 
basis of which he made his first calculations the mo- 
tions of the heavenly bodies were utterlv inconsistent 
with it. 

"To conclude, then, as regards the earth, I would say 
in the terms of one definition of evolution, terms which 
have furnished to witlings so much amusement, but vet 



448 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



which so accurately and appropriately express the idea 
intended, that I think it very probable that our earth and 
solar system constitute one case in which the homogeneous 
has been transformed by successive differentiations into 
the heterogeneous. 

"In the next place, respecting the origin of the various 
kinds of animals and organized forms generally, it has 
been supposed by some naturalists that existing forms, in- 
stead of having been independently created, have all been 
derived by descent, with modification, from a few forms 
or a single one. It is known that the offspring of a single 
pair differ slightly from each other and from their par- 
ents ; it is further known that such differences or varia- 
tions may be transmitted to subsequent generations ; and 
it is self-evident that under changing conditions the va- 
rieties best fitted to the new conditions would be most 
likely to survive. JSTow, under the operation of these 
principles, it is held that all the immense variety of exist- 
ing forms of plants and animals may have sprung from 
one or a few initial simple types. 

"In accordance with this supposition, the earliest in- 
habitants of the world would be very simple forms. 
Among the varieties produced in successive generations 
some would be more complex in their organization than 
their parents ; such complexity being transmitted would 
form kinds somewhat higher in rank; these in turn 
would give rise to others still more complex and higher ; 
until at length at the present day the most complex and 
highest would exist. All would not undergo such modi- 
fications as to produce the higher forms ; hence there 
would be at all times, along with the highest, every inter- 
mediate stage, though the existing low forms would differ 
in many particulars from their ancestors, unless indeed 
the conditions under which they lived remained un- 
changed. 

"Now in the statement just made we have an outline of 
the facts made known to us by an examination of the ani- 
mals and plants which are buried in the earth. The sedi- 
ment in the waters all over the world sooner or later sinks 
to the bottom in the form of layers ; this sediment con- 
tains remains of plants and animals carried down with ft, 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



449 



■and in various ways permanently preserves them. Of 
course only a very small part of the plants and animals 
could be thus preserved; still a few would be. If we 
could gain access to these layers and examine their con- 
tents, we would obtain a knowledge of the successive gen- 
erations of the past, the lowest layer being the oldest. It 
happens that a vast number of such layers have been hard- 
ened into rocks, and have been raised from the waters 
where they were formed, and so broken and tilted that we 
have ready access to them. Not less than nine-tenths of 
the dry land, so far as examined, is composed of sedimen- 
tary rocks ; and of these a large part contain the remains 
of plants and animals which were living at the time the 
rocks were formed. Of course it is not to be supposed 
that a complete series is known of all that ever were 
formed ; still enough are brought to view to lead to the 
belief that from an examination of their contents we may 
obtain a fair knowledge of the history of the succession 
of animals and plants from an early period down to the 
present. We cannot go back to the beginning, but we 
can go a long way. The outline thus obtained shows us 
that all the earlier organic beings in existence, through an 
immense period, as proved by an immense thickness of 
layers resting on each other, were of lower forms, with not 
one as high or of as complex an organization as the fish. 
Then the fish appeared, and remained for a long time the 
highest being on the earth. Then followed at long inter- 
vals the amphibian, or frog-like animal, the reptile, the 
lowest mammalian, then gradually the higher and higher, 
until at length appeared man, the head and crown of crea- 
tion. The plants present a similar history, the first 
known being simple forms, like the seaweed, followed as 
we pass upwards through the later layers by forms of 
higher and higher type, until we reach the diversity and 
complexity of existing vegetation. It is seen, too, that 
when a new type is first found, it does not present the 
full typical characters afterwards observed, but along 
with some of these also some of the characters belonging 
to other types. The earliest reptiles, for example, present 
many of the characters of the fish, the earliest birds and 
mammals many of the characters of the reptile, and so 



450 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



throughout the series. It is true there are many gaps, but 
not more than might he expected from the fact that the 
series of layers containing the remains is incomplete. 
When the layers show that the circumstances existing 
during the period while they were forming remained un- 
changed, then the kinds of animals underwent little or 
no change ; but if the layers show rapid changes in cli- 
mate, depth of water, etc., then the species of animals 
changed rapidly and frequently. 

"It would further follow, from the supposition under 
consideration, that all animals being related to each other 
by descent they must resemble each other. In the organic 
world every one knows that likeness suggests relationship,, 
and that relationship usually accompanies likeness, the 
nearer the relationship, the closer generally is the like- 
ness. ]STow careful observation makes known to us that 
the various animals are surprisingly like each other. In 
the highest class of vertebrate animals, and also in man, 
for example, the skeleton, the nervous system, the diges- 
tive system, the circulatory system, are all constructed on 
exactly the same plan. If the skull of a man is compared 
with the skull of a dog, or a horse, each will be seen to be 
composed of the same bones similarly situated. Where 
the number differs, the difference will be seen to result 
from the growing together of several bones in one case 
which were separate in the others. So the human arm, 
the leg of the quadruped, the wing of the bird, the paddle 
of the whale, will be found to be formed on exactly the 
same plan. When the form of the animal is such as to 
render unnecessary any part belonging to the general 
plan, it is not omitted at once, but is reduced in size and 
so placed as not to be in the way, and then in other similar 
animals by degrees passes beyond recognition. And so it 
is with every part. There are also the same kinds of re- 
semblance between the lowest animals ; and, further, be- 
tween any section of the lower animals and those which 
are just above or just below them in rank. Thus we may 
arrange all the forms in the entire animal kingdom from 
the highest to the lowest, according to their resemblances : 
and while the highest is indeed very unlike the lowest, a 
man very unlike a simple cell, yet at every step as we pass 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



451 



througli the entire series we find the resemblances vastly 
greater than the differences. 

"We thus have another set of facts which plainly would 
follow from descent with modification. 

"The existence of rudimentary organs is still another 
fact which would follow very naturally from this mode 
of creation, but which seems not very likely to have 
occurred if each species was independently created. For 
example, though a cow has no upper front teeth, a calf 
has such teeth some time before it is born. The adult 
whalebone whale has no teeth at all, but the young before 
birth is well supplied with them. In the blind worm, a 
snake-like animal, there are rudimentary legs which never 
appear externally. In the leg of a bird the bone below the 
thigh-bone, instead of being double as in the general plan, 
has the shin-bone, and a rudimentary bone welded into it 
representing the small outer bone, but not fulfilling any 
of its uses. The blind fish of the Mammoth Cave have 
optic nerves and rudimentary eyes. So in the leg of the 
horse, of the ox, and indeed in many parts of the body of 
every kind of animal, will be found rudimentary organs 
apparently not of the least use to the animal itself, but of 
great use to those animals which they closely resemble. 
All these facts are just such as the doctrine of descent 
with modification would lead us to expect, but which, 
seem hard to understand on the supposition that each spe- 
cies was independently and immediately created. 

"Again, the changes through which an animal passes in 
its embryonic state are just such as the doctrine of descent 
requires. All animals begin life in the lowest form, and 
all in substantially the same form. Each at first is a 
simple cell. Beginning with this cell in the case of the 
higher animals, we find that, in the course of embryonic 
development, at successive stages the general forms are 
presented which characterize the several groups in which 
animals are placed when classified according to their re- 
semblance to each other, ascending from the lowest to the 
highest. While it cannot be said that the human embryo 
is at one period an invertebrate, then a fish, afterwards" a 
reptile, a mammalian quadruped, and at last a hiunan 
being, yet it is true that it has at one period the inverte- 



452 



MY LIFE AjN t D TIMES. 



brate structure, then successively, in a greater or less 
number of particulars, the structure of the fish, the rep- 
tile, and the mammalian quadruped. And in many of 
these particulars the likeness is strikingly close. 

"The last correspondence which I shall point out be- 
tween the results of the doctrine of descent and actual 
facts is that which is presented by the geographical dis- 
tribution of animals. In this wide field I must confine 
myself to a few points. 

"By examining the depths of the channels which sep- 
arate islands from each other or from neighboring conti- 
nents, the relative length of time during which they must 
have been without land communication between them may 
he approximately ascertained. Where the channel is shal- 
low, they may have formed parts of a single body of land 
recently ; but where it is deep, they must ordinarily have 
been separate for a long time. For example, Great Brit- 
ain is separated from the continent of Europe by a very 
shallow channel; Madagascar is cut off from Africa by 
one that is very deep. In the East Indies, Borneo is sep- 
arated from Java by a sea not three hundred feet deep ; 
it is separated from Celebes, which is much nearer than 
Java, by a channel more than five thousand feet deep. 
Now, if the theory of descent with modification is true, 
it should be expected that in the regions recently sep- 
arated the animals would differ but slightly; in regions 
separated long ago, the animals would differ more widely ; 
and that, just in proportion to the length of separation. 
This is exactly what we find in the regions mentioned. 
The animals of Great Britain differ little from those on 
the adjacent continent, while the animals of Madagascar 
differ greatly from those of the neighboring coast of 
Africa. There are few kinds found in Java which are 
not also found in Borneo, while on the other hand very 
few kinds are found in Celebes which exist in Borneo. 
So it is the world over. 

"And this is not all. When we examine the kinds of 
animals which have recently become extinct in each coun- 
try, we find that they correspond exactly with those which 
now inhabit that country ; they are exactly such as should 
have preceded the present according to the doctrine of de- 



COXTROVEKSIES OF SCIENCE. 



453 



scent. For example, lions, tigers, and other flesh-eating 
animals of the highest rank, are found scattered over the 
great Eastern continent. In Australia the kangaroo and 
other pouched animals like the opossum abound, but none 
of any higher rank. In South America are found the 
sloth, the armadillo, and other forms which we meet with 
nowhere else on the earth. Now, in the Eastern continent 
we And buried in caves and the upper layers of the earth 
extinct kinds of lions, bears, hyenas, and the like, which 
differ from existing kinds, but yet closely resemble them. 
But we find nothing like the kangaroo or other pouched 
animals, or like the sloth or armadillo. Whereas if we 
examine the extinct buried animals in Australia, we find 
they are all pouched, with not a single example of any- 
thing of as high rank as the lion or the bear ; and if we 
do the same in South America, we see extinct kinds of ar- 
madillos and sloths, but nothing at all like the animals of 
Asia or Australia. It is equally true that wherever re- 
gions of the world are separated by barriers which pre- 
vent the passage of animals, whether these barriers are 
seas or mountain ranges or climatic zones, the groups of 
animals inhabiting the separated regions differ more or 
less widely from each other, just in proportion to the 
length of time during which the barriers have existed. If 
the barrier is such that it prevents the passage of one kind 
of animal and not another, then the groups will resemble 
each other in the animals whose passage is not prevented, 
and will differ in the rest. All this is independent of 
climate, and other conditions of life: two regions may 
have the same climate, may be equally favorable to the 
existence of a certain group of animals ; but if these re- 
gions are separated by impassible barriers, the groups 
differ just as previously stated. 

"In view of all the facts now presented, the way in 
which animals have succeeded each other, beginning as 
far back as we can go, and coming down to the present ; 
the series of resemblances which connect them from the 
lowest to highest, exhibiting such remarkable unity of 
plan ; ^ the existence of rudimentary organs ; the geo- 
graphical distribution of animals, and the close connec- 
tion of that distribution now and in the past — in view of 



454 



MY LIFE &ND TIMES 



all these facts the doctrine of descent with modification, 
which so perfectly accords with them all, cannot be lightly 
and contemptuously dismissed. In the enumeration 
made I have been careful to state none but well-ascer- 
tained facts, which any one who wishes to take the time 
can easily verify. Are not the coincidences such as must 
almost compel belief of the doctrine, unless it can be 
proved to be contradictory of other known truth \ For 
my part I cannot but so regard them ; and the more fully 
I become acquainted with the facts of which I have given 
a faint outline, the more I am inclined to believe that it 
pleased God, the almighty Creator, to create present and 
intermediate past organic forms not immediately, but 
mediately, in accordance with the general plan involved in 
the hypothesis I have been illustrating. 

"Believing as I do that the scriptures are almost cer- 
tainly silent on the subject, I find it hard to see how any 
one could hesitate to prefer the hypothesis of mediate 
creation to the hypothesis of immediate creation. The 
latter has nothing to offer in its favor ; we have seen a 
little of what the former may claim. 

"I cannot take time to discuss at length objections 
which have been urged against this hypothesis, but may 
say that they do not seem to me of great weight. It is 
sometimes said that, if applied to man, it degrades him to 
regard him as in any respect the descendant of the beast. 
We have not been consulted on the subject, and possibly 
our desire for noble origin may not be able to control the 
matter ; but, however that may be, it is hard to see how 
dirt is nobler than the highest organization which God 
up to that time created on the earth. And further, how- 
ever it may have been with Adam, we are perfectly cer- 
tain that each one of us has passed through a state lower 
than that of the fish, then successively through states not 
unlike those of the tadpole, the reptile, and the quadruped. 
Hence, whatever nobility may have been conferred on 
Adam by being made of dust has been lost to us by our 
passing through these low animal stages. 

"It has been objected that it removes God to such a 
distance from us that it tends to atheism. But the doc- 
trine of descent certainly applies to the succession of men 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



455 



from Adam up to the present. Are we any farther from 
God than were the earlier generations of the antedilu- 
vians ? Have we fewer proofs of his existence and power 
than they had ? It must be plain that if mankind shall 
continue to exist on the earth so long, millions of years 
hence the proofs of God's almighty creative power will be 
as clear as they are to-day. 

"It has been also objected that this doctrine excludes 
the idea of design in nature. But if the development of 
an oak from an acorn in accordance with laws which God 
has ordained and executes does not exclude the idea of 
design, I utterly fail to see how the development of our 
complex world, teeming with co-adaptations of the most 
striking character, can possibly exclude that idea. 

"I have now presented briefly, but as fully as possible in 
an address of this kind, my views as to the method which 
should be adopted in considering the relations between 
the scriptures and natural science, showing that all that 
should be expected is that it shall be made to appear by 
interpretations which may be true that they do not con- 
tradict each other ; that the contents and aims of the 
scriptures and of natural science are so different that it 
is unreasonable to look for agreement or harmony; that 
terms are not and ought not to be used in the Bible in a 
scientific sense, and that they are used perfectly truth- 
fully when they convey the sense intended ; that on these 
principles all alleged contradictions of natural science 
by the Bible disappear ; that a proper definition of evolu- 
tion excludes all reference to the origin of the forces and 
laws by which it works, and therefore that it does not and 
cannot affect belief in God or in religion; that, accord- 
ing to not unreasonable interpretations of the Bible, it 
does not contradict anything there taught so far as re- 
gards the earth, the lower animals, and probably man as 
to his body; that there are many good grounds for be- 
lieving that evolution is true in these respects ; and lastly, 
that the reasons urged against it are of little or no weight. 

"I would say in conclusion that while the doctrine of 
evolution in itself, as before stated, is not and cannot be 
either Christian or anti-Christian, religious or irreligious, 
tneistic or atheistic, yet viewing the history of our earth 



456 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



and its inhabitants, and of the whole universe, as it is un- 
folded by its help, and then going outside of it and recog- 
nizing that it is God's plax of creatiox, instead of being 
tempted to put away thoughts of him, as I contemplate 
this wondrous series of events, caused and controlled by 
the power and wisdom of the Lord God Almighty, I am 
led with profounder reverence and admiration to give 
glory and honor to him that sits on the throne, who liveth 
for ever and ever ; and with fuller heart and a truer ap- 
preciation of what it is to create, to join in saying, Thou 
are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and 
power ; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleas- 
ure they are and were created." 

Action of the Board of Directors. 

This address of the Perkins Professor, delivered to the 
joint meeting of the Board of Directors and the Alumni 
Association, on the 7th of May, 1884, and requested by 
them for publication, appeared in the July number of 
the Southern Presbyterian Review, and a copy of it put 
into the hands of each one of the board. At the board's 
regular meeting, September 16th and 17th, it was con- 
sidered. ~No doubt, from the exceeding great interest 
which the subject was exciting, this publication had been 
thoroughly read by them all beforehand. They expressed 
their approbation of it in strong terms, and by a three- 
fourths vote. A minute was adopted expressing their 
thanks for the ability and faithfulness exhibited therein, 
declaring their belief that he had plainly, clearly, and 
satisfactorily set forth the relations subsisting between 
the teachings of scripture and those of natural science; 
averring that, while not prepared to accept the Professor's 
view of the probable method of the creation of Adam's 
body, yet in their judgment there is nothing in evolution, 
as defined and limited by him, inconsistent with perfect 
soundness in the faith ; finally, taking occasion to record 
their deep and growing conviction of the wisdom of the 
synods in establishing the Perkins Professorship, through 
the instructions of which our ministry may be the better 
prepared to resist the objections of infidel scientists, and 
defend the scriptures against their insidious charges. 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



The affirmative votes which passed this minute were 
the following: A. W. Clisby, T. H. Law, W. J. McKay, 
W. A. Clark, T. B. Fraser, C. A. Stillman, J. W. Laps- 
ley, A. B. Curry. The negative votes were James Stacy, 
J". B. Mack, George W. Scott. The secretary was in- 
structed to send a copy of this paper to Dr. Woodrow. 

The minority offered the following protest, which was 
admitted to record : 

We protest for the following reasons: 

1. Evolution is an unproved hypothesis. 

2. Belief in evolution changes the interpretation of many passages 
of Scripture from that now received by the church. 

3. The view that Adam's body was evolved from lower animals, 
and not formed by a supernatural act of God, is dangerous and 
hurtful. 

4. The theory that Adam's body was formed by the law of evolu- 
tion, while Eve's was created by a supernatural act of God, is con- 
trary to our standards ( Confession of Faith, Chap, iv., Sec. 2 ; 
Larger Catechism, Quest. 17), as those standards have been and are 
interpreted by our church. 

5. The advocacy of views which have received neither the endorse- 
ment of the board nor of the Synods having control of the Sem- 
inary; which have not been established by science; which have no 
authority from the word of God ; which tend to unsettle the received 
interpretation of many passages of Scripture, and to weaken the 
confidence of the church in her standards; which have already pro- 
duced so much evil by their agitation, and which will injure the 
Seminary, and may rend our church — ought not to be allowed. 

Proceedings of the Synod of South Carolina. 

Some six weeks after this meeting of the board, the 
Synod of South Carolina met, under considerable excite- 
ment. The other controlling synods which were to meet 
shortly afterwards were also fully alive to the import- 
ance of the occasion and the question that was to arise. 

Meantime a number of synods, besides the four con- 
trolling ones, and many presbyteries also, seemed to con- 
sider it was their duty to condemn the Perkins Professor. 
The Synods of Kentucky and Nashville, and I believe 
Mississippi and Virginia, had all anticipated the four 
synods in giving their judgment of his case. Even the 



-458 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



'General Assembly as early as May, 18 86, on the first 
day of its meeting appointed a special committee of thir- 
teen to receive and handle overtures on this subject which 
it was expected would be sent in. 

The intelligent student of ecclesiastical history, who 
•considers the matter fairly, will not wonder much at any 
of these manifestations of popular excitement. The nine- 
teenth century is far in advance of the sixteenth century 
as to some matters, let us say in civilization, in mechan- 
ical inventions and the arts, and in popular education, but 
the men of the sixteenth century in Europe had as much 
common sense and were endowed with as clear perceptions 
and as sound judgment as belong to the people of these 
States now. As to our educated classes, they are no more 
in possession of all science than educated men were three 
liundred years ago. The devout Roman Catholic people 
of the sixteenth century, and even their most learned 
ecclesiastics, and still more the Pope himself, could not 
bear to hear that the sun did not rise nor set, nor that this 
steadfast old earth was rolling round on its own axis and 
whirling with the steam engine's speed around the sun. 
How could our plain Presbyterians, taught from their 
.childhood to believe every word of the Bible just as it is 
translated, or our most eminent doctors of divinity, hold- 
ing fast to the plenary inspiration of the word of God, 
tolerate any other interpretation of the Mosaic account 
of man's creation than that the Almighty formed his body 
out of literal inorganic dust ? Theological education does 
not teach any of the secrets of chemistry or the other 
sciences ; how can it possibly expound all the mysteries of 
creation ? 

There was anti-evolution in the air, and a large attend- 
ance gathered at the First Church in Greenville on Wed- 
nesday, the 22d of October, 1884, where the Synod of 
South Carolina was to meet at eight o'clock p. m. The 
"Rev. J. S. White, of Bethel Presbytery, was elected Mod- 
erator, and Pev. P. A. Webb, Temporary Clerk. The 
Standing Committee on the Theological Seminary con- 
sisted of Pev. Messrs. J. S. Cozby, G. P. Brackett, D. D., 
and P. A. Webb, with Puling Elders Silas Johnstone and 
T\ L. Anderson. The first special order of the day on 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



459 



Thursday was postponed in order to admit the report of 
the Board of Directors of the Theological Seminary. 

The report being read, the Eev. Dr. Girardeau moved 
that so much of it as related to the Perkins Professorship 
be immediately considered by the Committee on the Sem- 
inary, and that a report on the same be made to the Synod 
as soon as possible. This motion was unanimously 
adopted. The committee retired. In the evening the 
church building was crowded to its utmost capacity, and 
the report was awaited with the keenest interest. 

The majority reported : 

1. That the hypothesis of evolution respecting the earth, the lower 
animals, and man's body, being a purely scientific and extra scrip- 
tural theory, the church, as such, is not called upon to make any 
deliverance concerning its truth or falsity. 2. That the church, 
being set for the defence of the gospel and the promulgation of 
scriptural doctrines, can never, without transcending her proper 
sphere, incorporate into her Confession of Faith any of the hypoth- 
eses, theories or systems of human science. 3. That while the pre- 
sentation of the hypothesis of evolution in its relations to Scripture 
falls necessarily within the scope of the duties pertaining to the 
Perkins Professorship, nevertheless, neither this nor any other 
scientific hypothesis is, or can be, taught in our Theological Semi- 
nary as an article of church faith. 4. That, in view of the above 
considerations, the Synod sees no sufficient reason to interfere with 
the present order of our Theological Seminary as determined by the 
Board of Directors. 

(Signed) J. S. Cozby, 

G. R. Beackett, 
Silas Johx stone. 

The minority report was : 

1. That the question, whether Dr. Woodrow's views in regard to 
evolution involve heresy, is not before the Synod. 2. That the Synod 
was not called on to decide the question whether the views of Dr. 
Woodrow contradict the Bible in its highest and most absolute 
sense, but whether they contradict the interpretations of the Bible by 
the Presbyterian Church in the United States. 3. That the declara- 
tion of the Board of Directors, that "the relations subsisting be- 
tween the teachings of Scripture and the teachings of natural 
science are plainly, correctly, and satisfactorily set forth" in Dr. 
Woodrow's address on evolution, was inexpedient and injudicious. 
4. That the action of the Board of Directors virtually approving the 



460 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



inculcation and the defence of the said hypothesis, even as a prob- 
able one, in the Theological Seminary, as being contrary to the in- 
terpretation of the Scriptures by our church and to her prevailing 
and recognized view, is, a majority of the associated Synods con- 
curring, hereby prohibited. 

(Signed) R. A. Wkbb, 

F. L. Axdersox. 

After a brief delay, Mr. Webb rose and moved the adop- 
tion of the minority report. Eev. J. L. Martin moved the 
adoption of the majority report as a substitute. 

A brief parliamentary discussion ensued, Rev. Dr. Gi- 
rardeau contending that under the custom of Synod the 
last resolution of the majority report ought not to be en- 
tertained. The Moderator overruled the objection, and 
Dr. Girardeau appealed. His appeal was submitted to 
Synod, and the ruling of the Moderator was sustained on 
a viva voce vote, evidently by a large majority, no division 
being called for. 

The majority report was then taken up and discussed. 

This memorable debate lasted five days. It is of course 
impossible for me to report it in full. What I report is 
chiefly taken from the Southern Presbyterian of October 
30, 1884, and it received its reports from the Green r ill e 
News and the Charleston News and Courier of those days. 
I have had to omit entirely some of the speeches, and to 
shorten the rest very much. I hope to be found dealing 
with every speaker in absolute fairness. The reports in 
general were far from being altogether clear, and some 
of the speakers have claimed the right to improve or ex- 
plain the reports of what they said. 

Rev. J. S. Cozby, chairman of the committee, opened 
the debate, explaining the significance of the report. It 
was simply this, that the church as such can express no 
judgment as to any extra-scriptural matter. He asked 
the question, where does this hypothesis come from \ It 
certainly does not come from the scriptures, and no one 
will question that it is purely a scientific one ; and the 
position of the majority report is that the church as such 
is not called upon to express any judgment as to the truth 
or falsity of any such extra-scriptural hypothesis. In 
that lies the settlement of the whole question. If we pass 



CONTKOVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



461 



judgment on a question like this there will be no limit to 
our scope of judgment. We could as well decide ques- 
tions of politics or anything else. As individuals we can 
have our opinions respecting matters of science, but as a 
church we can have none. As to the third resolution, let 
me say that the Perkins Professor in his teaching could 
not avoid this question. The very object of his chair, as 
endowed by Judge Perkins, was that he should investigate 
this and other like questions. We had accepted the en- 
dowment and elected the Professor to do precisely this 
very work. Infidel scientists are attacking the Bible. It 
was the very business of Dr. Woodrow to show that God's 
word is impregnable. 

Rev. John B. Aclger, D. D., said: "Infidelity was con- 
tinually changing her ground. We have routed her al- 
ready on many fields. For many years past her chosen 
ground has been natural science, hence the widespread 
opinion that natural science is the enemy of the gospel, 
which is a very great error. Many writers on theology 
teach heresy, but do you say that theology itself is heresy % 
God in nature is the same as God in his word, and there 
can therefore be no contradiction between the teachings 
of nature and revelation when both are properly under- 
stood. Many ministers have made themselves the laugh- 
ing stock of scientific men by advancing such fearful ab- 
surdities in their ignorant endeavors to defend the Bible. 
I know what the minority report means. I know what 
this opposition to the board's report signifies. It is that 
you must abolish, or else fundamentally alter, this Per- 
kins professorship. It is a nuisance, a dangerous and 
fatal one, overturning the faith of our church. But if 
you listen to this outcry, a loud shout of triumph will go 
up from the camp of unbelief. It will be said, you se- 
lected your man ; you put forward your best man ; you 
said to him, study the question of the relation of scrip- 
ture and science, and the very first time he spoke, you 
could not bear to hear what he said. There is no better 
way of encouraging infidelity than this policy of placing 
the church in the way of science, and manifesting that 
the church is afraid of it. I say that if this synod and our 
associated synods shall adopt this policy, I shall hang my 



462 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



head, whatever the rest of you may do. I pray God that 
no such dishonor as this is to be done to God's truth and 
to his word as to show that we have any apprehensions 
from the discoveries of real science. 

"We are told by the minority report that there is no 
charge of heresy against Dr. Woodrow. This is what they 
say. What then is the trouble ? Why, merely that he is 
'inculcating an unproved hypothesis.' What is an un- 
proved hypothesis ? It is an open question, a thing ad- 
mitting of debate. It can hardly be true that he would 
inculcate what is an open question or a thing admitting of 
debate, though he should acquaint the students that there 
is such a question and what is said for it. Is the instruc- 
tion in the Seminary to be confined entirely to what is 
proved to be true ? They tell us the genius of the Theo- 
logical Seminary is dogmatic. I maintain that its genius 
is that of inquiry into all truth. It will not do to teach 
those students to fear and shun any truth. It was 
through the discussion of unproved hypotheses for ages 
that the church came to determine the clear and positive 
teachings of scripture theology. When the light of in- 
spiration was withdrawn, many and various interpreta- 
tions of scripture arose among her members, and the 
church had to contend with unproved hypotheses for long 
centuries before she reached the settled doctrine of the 
Trinity. Next came the discusssions about fallen man, 
original sin, and the doctrines of grace, and the church 
had to meet the unproved hypotheses of Pelagius and 
others of her professed sons. Must the students have no 
information about the connection between Pelagianism 
and the scriptures ? After the dark ages the Reformers 
had to begin again the discussion of unproved hypotheses. 
But we are now told that in this age the only questions to 
be considered in the Seminary are the settled doctrines 
of the church. Are they to hear nothing of the errors of 
Rome and Unitarianism lest they should become infected 
with the same ? Is our church entirely settled about her 
own theology, or as to every question regarding church 
government and discipline ? Is it not well understood 
that our Book of Church Order is a compromise, the re- 
sult of mutual concessions ? Then there is the unproved 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



463 



hypothesis of the lawfulness of instrumental music in 
Christian worship, respecting which Dr. Girardeau and 
I are entirely agreed. But has he not the right as a pro- 
fessor to discuss before his classes that unproved hypothe- 
sis, or the other one about the millennium ? And is he 
not accustomed every Thursday evening to join the other 
professors and the students in discussing all sorts of un- 
proved hypotheses V 

Rev. J. B. Mack, D. D., said : "I have been amazed and 
amused at the argument of the brother who has just sat 
down. He Said in one breath that if Synod sustained the 
minority report, it would brand Dr. Woodrow as an in- 
fidel, and in the next showed that the minority has not 
even accused Dr. Woodrow of heresy. The discussion is 
a vital one for the Seminary. Its issue will decide 
whether the institution shall die and be buried, or 
whether it will continue to stand a faithful witness to the 
truth of God. It will decide whether the Southern Pres- 
byterian Church will stand beautiful, strong and pure as 
in the by-gone days, or whether she will prove a degen- 
erate daughter of her noble mother. 

"What is the position of the minority? It does not 
charge infidelity against Dr. Woodrow, and the assertion 
that it does is unworthy of men seeking the truth. When 
a man believes in the inspiration of God's word, he is not 
an infidel, whether he be Arminian, Unitarian, or Presby- 
terian. The Perkins Professor is not charged with her- 
esy ; his resignation is not asked for. The Perkins Pro- 
fessor sinks into insignificance in comparison with the 
great question at stake, and even the life or death of the- 
Seminary is a small thing. The character of the South- 
ern Church is on trial before the world. That is why the 
minority have carefully avoided personalities, and sought 
to place the issue squarely before the board. 

"The hypothesis of evolution is that God created one or 
a few forms and from them evolved all the various organ- 
ized beings on the earth. By the natural law of evolu- 
tion, forms more compact and various were gradually- 
evolved, and were not created by any supernatural act. 
One application of this principle is that Adam was finally- 
evolved from a brute. " 



464 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



Dr. Mack quoted from Dr. Woodrow' s address, and 
said its teaching was that Adam was the son of a male and 
female brute, and was born a baby brute. "It belongs to 
men of science to ascertain facts, base a theory on them, 
and present them for the consideration of logical minds. 
But can any man say that this hypothesis is true, and 
can it be taught to the children of the church as truth ? If 
we cannot say whether a thing is quinine or arsenic, 
should we administer it to our households ? If the synod 
has no power over this professorship, it should never have 
been created, for none can tell whether truth or error is 
being taught. The Southern Church has boasted that it 
kept the crown pure and bright, while the Xorthern 
Church descended to consider political and other ques- 
tions. Now it is proposed to cast that crown down to be 
trampled under the feet of the Caesar of science. If this 
theory deals with the Bible, has Synod no right to deal 
with it ? What is a minister but an authorized inter- 
preter of God's word ? What are the church courts but 
the same ? Dr. Adger has declared that the Seminary is 
the place to teach unproved hypotheses. My impression 
is that the Seminary is the place to teach young men to 
preach the word and say, 'We believe, and therefore we 
teach.' 

"I deny that the church required centuries to find her 
God. She knew him in the first century, finding him by 
reading the word, and having it interpreted by the Spirit, 
not by the study of unproved hypotheses. Woe be the day 
when the Columbia Seminary will be a place for trifling 
with unproved hypotheses. It will be a very plague spot. 
What use will a minister have for unproved hypotheses ? 
When men come to him to know what to do to be saved or 
for comfort, or when their feet trod the verge of Jordan, 
could or would a minister comfort them with an unproved 
hypothesis ? 

"Professor Agassiz has pronounced the doctrine of evo- 
lution a scientific blunder, untrue in fact, unscientific in 
teaching, and ruinous in tendency. The evolution of Dr. 
Woodrow is the evolution of Darwin modified. Darwin 
says that both the body and the spirit of man were 
evolved. Dr. Woodrow, in his explanation of his theory, 



COXTEOVEESIES OF SCIEXCE. 



465 



•explicitly excludes mention of the power by Avhich the 
thing was done. Seven points of similarity show that the 
doctrine of Darwin and that of Dr. Woodrow are alike. 
The theory contradicts the interpretation given by the 
church to several passages of scripture. The church in- 
terprets the 'dust' in the Bible literally. Every man's 
interpretation of the Bible constitutes his Bible, The 
Presbyterian interpretation of the Bible is the Presby- 
terian Bible. Xobody wants to interfere with the right 
of private judgment, but Synod has the right to interfere 
when its authorized representative instills doctrines in 
its rising ministers which the church cannot believe. 

"The teaching of future ministers that Adam was 
evolved and Eve created is contrary to the Confession of 
Eaith and the Larger Catechism. The Confession sets 
forth that after God had created all other creatures he 
created man, male and female, with immortal and reason- 
able souls. The Catechism teaches that God created man, 
male and female, that he created man from the dust and 
woman from his rib, and gave them living, reasonable and 
immortal souls. The interpretation of the story of crea- 
tion by the church is that God, by a supernatural act, 
•created the body and soul of Adam and Eve. He created 
man, entire, body and soul. This Confession of Eaith is 
the bond of union in the church. 

"The question of Synod is whether the church shall 
stand by her time-honored standards and adhere to the 
pure principles announced at her very organization, when 
she declared that she would preach nothing but the gospel, 
or whether, in the language of the distinguished and ven- 
erable Dr. B. M. Palmer, of Xew Orleans (where the 
presbytery adopted a resolution against the teaching of 
evolution by a vote of twenty-four to two), she shall leave 
all and run after this mew departure.' " 

Dr. ILack then took up the resolutions of the minority 
of the Board of Directors. "There is no charge of infi- 
delity or heresy against Dr. Woodrow, and no request for 
his resignation, or that he shall cease to teach the proba- 
bility of the doctrine of evolution [ The issue pre- 
sented is whether an appointed teacher of one of the two 
•seminaries of the church shall teach the doctrine, the un- 



466 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



proved hypothesis, the purely scientific and extra-scrip- 
tural theory, that the higher species were evolved from 
the lower, and that the body of our federal head and fa- 
ther, Adam, was derived from a brute. All personal 
praise of Dr. Woodrow is out of place in this discussion. 

"I have wondered at the action of the majority of the 
board, but have come to believe that God permitted them 
to be blind that the matter might be taken squarely before 
the church. I hope it will not be contended that the evolu- 
tion theory is the view, but not the teaching, of the Per- 
kins Professor. Such a claim will put him in a very bad 
light, for the address was elicited by a request 'for his 
views as taught. 7 >? 

Dr. Mack closed with the warning that the action of the 
Seminary's best friends in other States indicated that 
they looked on this new doctrine as a breach of faith and a 
betrayal of their confidence ; and that if this evil was not 
rcoted out, the Church would be divided and the Semi- 
nary irretrievably injured. 

Pev. W. F. Junkiu, D. D., said: '"Had I drawn that 
report, I should have made the language more forcible,, 
report expresses. I would have this Synod say, in lan- 
more forcible way to the underlying thought which that 
report expresses. I would have this synod say, in lan- 
guage so clear and explicit that none should fail to under- 
stand its significance, that we discredit and disallow, and, 
so far as our authority goes, prohibit the enunciation of 
doctrines such as are reported to be taught in the Colum- 
bia Theological Seminary. 

"It has been asked in the progress of the. discussion, in 
the midst of our theological lights, do we intend to re- 
enact the history of Galileo in the Dark Ages ? You may 
regard it as the very height of hardihood in 5 me, but I 
dare, in this presence and in this age, to affirm, and do not 
hesitate to say it, that the position of the Church of Pome 
in that connection is the one that the church in all ages 
will be called upon to occupy. The church, and very 
properly, said to Galileo, 'So long as you bear our cre- 
dentials, you shall not utter things which we believe to 
be untrue.' The church cannot and will not dare to al- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



467; 



low her doctrines, which she holds to be true, to be suc- 
cessfully assailed or controverted. 

"My sincere conviction is that the students of this doc- 
trine of evolution, as it is commonly understood, will be- 
come even more scientific than their instructors them- 
selves. Let them take home with them the theory of evo- 
lution and believe it on the authority of a successful 
leader. Will they stop at the point where their honored 
professor would stop '{ I trow not, sir. It is not the weak 
ones who start a heresy. It is the flash of the meteor 
which marks the fall of the star. The theory breaks 
down that reverence and that confidence in God's word 
which is the great security of our Christian faith. The 
theory places the church in the attitude of listening to a 
proposition coming from science to alter its interpreta- 
tion of the word of God ; and that alteration to be made in 
view of statements made to it by science in favor of the- 
ories that have not been demonstrated to be true. Lastly, 
I argue that, knowing as we do the origin of the human 
body, the soul would shrink with repugnance and abhor- 
rence from the nature and mode of creation ascribed to it 
by the theory under discussion." 

[My report of Professor Hemphill's speech is takeir 
from the Louisville Courier Journal.^ 

Professor C. E. Hemphill, 13. D., said: "This question 
is vital. In this respect I agree with the brethren on the 
other side. The principles at stake are those of truth, 
righteousness, and justice. I propose to show that if this; 
body adopt the minority report (enjoining silence upon 
Professor Wooclrow), it will traverse each and every one 
of these grand principles. What is the question before 
us ? I read the minority report. The first resolution in 
it affirms that there is no question before the Synod of 
'heresy' in the teachings of the Perkins chair, and yet this 
whole discussion proceeds upon the assumption that there 
is heresy. What is heresy ? According to our standards, 
heresy is something in conflict with the word of God as 
interpreted in our Confession and Catechisms. If a 
presbyter holds and teaches what contradicts these stand- 
ards, he holds and teaches heresy. That is the only con- 
ception of heresy which can properly come before this: 



468 MY LIFE AND TIMES. 

body. Dr. Woodrow's teaching lias been denounced as 
heresy, enormous and hurtful heresy. This very day it 
has been insinuated on this floor that you may no more 
substitute for the children of the church, instead of truth, 
his teachings than you could give to them instead of 
quinine the deadly arsenic. So also it has been charged 
to-day that the evolution of Dr. Woodrow is the evolution 
of Darwin modified, and that seven points of similarity 
show them to be the same. In fact this whole discussion 
proceeds upon the assumption that there is heresy. Our 
opponents who have charged heresy for the Professor, or 
even those who think it of him, will stultify themselves if 
they vote for that resolution which says there is no 
heresy." 

He then read the second resolution. 

"The question is not, say the minority, whether these 
teachings contradict the Bible in its highest and absolute 
sense, but whether they contradict the interpretations of 
the Bible by the Presbyterian Church in the United 
States. The Presbyterian Church has no interpretation 
except those in her standards. I challenge the proof of 
any other. Some of you remember what one of the speak- 
ers (Dr. Adger) mentioned last night, that in the Old 
School Assembly, while we formed part of it, Dr. R. J. 
Breckinridge, whom all consider a high type of Presby- 
terian, urged the appointment of a committee to prepare 
a church commentary. But the Assembly sat down on 
the proposition and crushed it forever. Even Dr. Breck- 
inridge's great influence could not persuade the church to 
put forth interpretations of scripture other than those in 
her Confession. But the advocates of the minority report 
try to make us believe that there are somewhere else inter- 
pretations of the Bible accepted by the church other than 
those in her standards. ~No logic can justify that patched- 
up paper. I like the last speaker (Dr. Junkin), who 
wished to go beyond the minority report. I honor that 
position, because it is consistent with logic. But to say 
there is no heresy, and yet to treat a man as if guilty of 
heresy, is wholly unjustifiable. I confess great sympathy 
for the opposition. They have hung out a flag of distress 
hy offering that paper. In tones of thunder they have 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



469 



proclaimed that heresy is taught in the Seminary and en- 
dorsed by the board. It is a call to the church to come to 
the rescue. I expected to discuss the real issue, but in- 
stead a paper is presented to catch every breeze of oppo- 
sition, as well as the sweeping tornado of heresy. I wish 
they would stand by their last speaker (Dr. Junkin). We 
hold them to the point. The paper does not claim that 
Dr. Woodrow contradicts the Bible, but only certain in- 
terpretations of it ; not those interpretations in the Con- 
fession which constitute the system of doctrine to which 
we are all pledged, but outside the Confession, somewhere 
or other ; we are not told where. 

"This whole affair is of the nature of a trial. Both the 
Perkins Professor and the board are on trial, the one for 
teaching heresy, the other for endorsing it. I ask them to 
specify the article of the Confession which has been vio- 
lated. That minority report is a paper unworthy to be 
presented to this body, affirming that the endorsement 
of Dr. Woodrow's general principles is 'injudicious and 
inexpedient/ and yet assigning no reason for the asser- 
tion, not affirming that it was wrong, but 'inexpedient,' 
thus evading the question whether the teaching were right 
or wrong. 

" Their expression inculcating' evolution (resolution 
4) is a phrase apt to mislead, if the language be taken in 
its ordinary sense. Evolution is not defended or 'incul- 
cated' in the sense which their words would imply. What 
are the teachings of Professor Woodrow ? What the ob- 
ject and scope of his chair ? Listen to a brief exposition 
of this point. The object of this chair is to teach the 
connection subsisting between natural science and revela- 
tion. This chair has a more definite object than any other 
in the institution. What is the relation between science 
and the Bible % Does the Bible contradict any of the well- 
ascertained facts of science ? There is no possible contra- 
diction between these facts and any passage of scripture 
as originally given to us by God. What then are the re- 
lations between scripture and science \ The Professor al- 
ways insists on the absolute inerrancy of God's word. 
But he informs his students of the facts which evolution 
has discovered. It is a matter of no consequence to Bible 



470 



MY LIFE A~ND TIMES. 



students, as such, whether what evolution says is true or 
false. But the Professor shows his students that there is 
a well-ascertained continual upward progress in God's 
■creating work, for God is still working in creation. He 
.also informs them what many atheistic scientists have in- 
ferred from these facts to the dishonor of God's holy in- 
fallible word. So much for what he says of the facts of 
• evolution. Then turning to the infallible word of God as 
we have it translated, he admits that the word dust can- 
not be literally insisted on as the necessary meaning of 
the Hebrew word it represents. In some such way as this 
he shows the relations between holy scripture and science, 
•God's word and God's works, never mutually contradic- 
tory, though we may not be able to set forth their har- 
mony. He does not inculcate evolution any more than 
astronomy. He only shows how it really stands related 
to God's word. Only this and nothing more. And the 
opposition now wish to deprive him of the poor little priv- 
ilege of giving his own private opinion as to these things. 
I was often struck while a student with his painful faith- 
fulness in this respect, that he persisted in teaching sim- 
ply the relation of natural science with the Bible. They 
talk about his mew departure.' Did he say when entering 
that Seminary that he did not believe in evolution ? Or 
has a man no right to make progress after becoming a 
professor in a theological seminary? Are you going to 
hold him to the view that at his entrance he knows every- 
thing that he ever will know ? A pitiful company of pro- 
fessors ! 'We know all !' According to ideas of the Ken- 
tucky Synod, not only knowing what is, but. also what will 
be. They look into the future and know what they will 
not believe. Does Dr. Woodrow teach the doctrines of 
science in the same sense and for the same purpose as Dr. 
Girardeau teaches the atonement ? or as Dr. Boggs teaches 
the facts of biblical history ? or the professor of biblical 
literature teaches the inspiration of the Bible? It is a 
misleading expression as used in the minority report, 'in- 
culcation and defence.' The very purpose of the Perkins 
chair forbids such teaching ; not science for its own sake, 
but science in its 'connection' with the Bible, is what Dr. 
Woodrow teaches. It is a play on words, 'teaching,' 



CONTEOVEKSIES OF SCIENCE. 



471 



'teaching,' 'teaching evolution,' as they are continually 
harping on the expression. I believe as a fact that there 
is not one of his pupils who believes in evolution, and 
there is not likely ever to be one, so far as the teachings 
of Dr. Woodrow are concerned. 

"I come now to the very core of this discussion, and ask 
your fixed attention. What is a theological seminary? 
Where is the definition of it in our standards ? It is not 
there. This is the most complete back down that I ever 
saw. I wish to show the results of their position. 'The 
seminary cannot teach what the church cannot teach. 7 
What is the church to teach ? Spiritual truth ; only that 
and nothing more. The seminary cannot, therefore, 
teach in any way metaphysics, church history, Hebrew 
and Greek grammar, because the church cannot do it ! 
Stand by your argument. 

"The seminary is not even recognized in our standards. 
How can it then be the church's organ for teaching what 
she is responsible for ? Show by the standards what the 
seminary must say. You cannot do it. Is the church, 
therefore, responsible for every utterance of each pro- 
fessor ? What is a seminary ? There is no command to 
create one. The 'Church in the United States' has no 
such creature, and cannot then be responsible for its 
teachings. Who then is responsible? The four 'asso- 
ciated synods' that created it. ' They might have adopted 
different measures had they so pleased. For fear one 
might teach heresy they might have ordained that stu- 
dents memorize and recite scripture 'without note or com- 
ment,' or else the language of our standards, forbidding 
the professor to make any remarks, lest he teach heresy. 
What were the methods adopted ? The Constitution 
answers. 

"It is said that Dr. Woodrow is not on trial. I empha- 
size the fact that he is on trial, and yet without safe- 
guards or the privileges provided by this Constitution (of 
the Columbia Seminary). The synods have entered into 
agreement with each other to govern by and through the 
Board of Directors. The synods do not control immedi- 
ately, but mediately through the board. This Constitu- 
tion is not a set of rules so much as a bill of rights. The 



472 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



Synod has its rights, the board theirs, Dr. Woodrow his. 
For example, who elects a professor ? Xot the Synod, but 
the board. After the election by the board, the Synod can 
approve or disapprove. The veto belongs to the Synod. 
But if the Synod, for any cause, does not speak, the elec- 
tion becomes valid without any act on its part. Has the 
professor no rights ? Is he to be stopped by resolutions of 
the Synod 3 The board has the right to remove a profess* >r 
when he is found unfaithful or incompetent (see Art. 11, 
page 5). The board may suspend him until fully 'tried' 
(ibid), and report their action to the synods. Professor 
Woodrow has rights ; sacred rights. May God grant that 
there will be Presbyterians found still who will give a 
man his rights. The only method of proceeding legally 
in the board was for the objectors to table charges of 'un- 
faithfulness' or 'incompetency.' Then there would have 
been a fair trial with full discussion, and the Synod would 
have had the review of a case. The board has the right 
to try and remove a professor, and that excludes the right 
of the Synod to do so. The Synod cannot do what by the 
Constitution is expressly assigned to another body — e ex- 
pressio unius est exclusio alterius/ This is the univer- 
sally recognized rule of law. Are you going to raise a 
hurrah ! and try to sweep a man out of his place by 
clamor ? Is that Presbyterianism ? Xo ! A man is not 
condemned till tried. So speaks this Constitution. The 
Synod, by adopting the minority report, would travel far 
out of that path which is defined in the law. The sup- 
posed right of the Synod to say to a professor, 'Your views 
do not contradict the Bible as interpreted in these stand- 
ards, but they do not suit us,' is the same as saying, 'Or- 
thodoxy is my doxy and heterodoxy is your doxy.' 
[Laughter.] The only way to stop a professor is to re- 
move him from office either for 'unfaithfulness' or 'in- 
competency' after a fair trial. These are the legal limits. 
The pledge or vow given by each professor when inaugu- 
rated binds him not to contradict the doctrines of the 
standards of the church. The giving of this limit is the 
exclusion of all other tests. His teaching is limited only 
by that formula. I challenge the right of the Synod to 
reverse the action of the board and prohibit his teaching. 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



473 



It is asked, 'Do not these synods control the Seminary V 
I reply by asking, does not the Constitution of the United 
States give some control in and over the States to the 
Federal government? But is not our bitter complaint 
just this that the majority have overridden these limits 
and then said, 'We have the power to work our pleasure !' 
So you of the Synod can do it by trampling under your 
feet this Constitution just as they suspend and disregard 
the provisions of the Constitution for us by force of num- 
bers. You can, but I do not believe you will, do such in- 
justice. Moderator, to the law we must go. 

"I trust the Synod will excuse a few personal allusions. 
There is a question in church polity as to the exact rela- 
tions of church and state. Being brought up in our con- 
ference, we, the professors, were found to differ among 
ourselves. Let me now be told what are the 'accepted in- 
terpretations V I do not know. As to the will, the views 
of the professor of Theology are contrary to those of Ed- 
wards, which are generally accepted by the ministry. 
Thornwell's latest opinions were also opposed to Edwards, 
but the professor who came in between Dr. Thornwell and 
Dr. Girardeau was, I believe, with Edwards. ]\ T ow, shall 
Synod prevent the present professor of Theology from 
teaching what is opposed to the Edwardean or 'received' 
view ? There are differences among us as to the deacon's 
functions. Of these we have at least three views in the 
faculty. Which of these is the 'accepted interpretation' ? 
As to the call to the ministry, we have different opinions 
when that comes up for discussion. Each professor gives 
his own view, and leaves the students to select between 
them. 

"This Synod must not evade the question : Is a professor 
forbidden to vary from received interpretations of the 
church ? 

"I criticise the whole proceeding. It has been 'hush,' 
'I am afraid of evolution.' 'I would not say it contra- 
dicts the Bible ;' but 'silence ! silence !' 'Keep silence, O 
earth!' If the earth would keep silence and obey the 
Synod, very well. But the earth will not keep silence. 

"Look at the position in which you place your profes- 
sor. These young men hear about this terrible evolution. 



474 



MY LIFE ASTD TIMES. 



They occasionally see a book or magazine. They come to 
the Seminary in great doubt, having heard of evolution in 
college. This Synod, sitting as a scientific association, 
undertakes, in the far sweep of its knowledge, to say, 
'Though every scientific man believes it, yet we say it is 
an 'unverified hypothesis.' 'Hear, O earth,' but she will 
not keep silence. There was a time when a majority of 
the Christian world, great as that of the Synods of Ken- 
tucky and Nashville, believed that everything was made 
in six natural days of twenty-four hours each. 'The geo- 
logical hypothesis is not based on facts,' they said. But 
there were facts, and many of them too. Geologists 
'rooted down' and found out that all was not made in six 
ordinary days. If the Synod of South Carolina had had 
such geologists before them, they would perhaps have 
been tempted to shut their mouths. That was an 'accepted 
interpretation.' Perhaps the members of the church to- 
day mostly hold to the 'accepted interpretation' of that 
day, and, on the principle of the minority, would sweep 
the ministry out of existence for not believing it. 'Away 
with the geologist ! Let him go into that bottomless abyss 
that he has been rooting at,' was the cry. Now the church 
has to cry in the presence of this impertinent science, 
'PeccaviF Then consider the deluge controversy. The 
'accepted interpretation' required a universal deluge. 
There was no apparent need of one, since the only purpose 
was to destroy sinful man, not yet spread abroad over all 
the globe. But the language ! the language demanded 
universality. 

"Recall the controversy on the 'vowel points' in He- 
brew. There was a dreadful controversy over their in- 
spiration. The Buxtorfs, with all their learning, erred. 
But at last the truth prevailed : they were devised by the 
uninspired scribes. The accepted view was wrong. 

"Recall the 'purist controversy.' 'The New Testa- 
ment Greek,' so men said, 'must be pure — purer than that 
of Demosthenes or Plato.' This view was 'accepted' by 
most, but it came to naught. Is the church of God never 
to learn anything by experience ? Is she ever to hurl her- 
self against things in which she has no interest ? The eyes 
of the world are upon you. The ears of science are listen- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



475 



ing. Are we to yield to clamor ? Outside clamor \ The 
very loudness of the clamor calls upon us to act like Pres- 
byterians — to stick to the law! Do not, by any act of 
yours, by implication pass condemnation upon a man 
without giving him a trial. I beg you, not because I am 
a personal friend of Dr. Woodrow, but because I am here 
as a presbyter. I beg you because of your plighted faith 
to this Constitution. Yield not to outside pressure ; yield 
not to fear of results, but stick to the law. If you jump 
to a conclusion virtually condemning Dr. Woodrow, from 
which you must retreat, then this noble Seminary, so dear 
to us, will trail the blue banner of her Presbyterianism, 
which has long floated over her, in the presence of science. 
And we will strike our standard, leave our guns, and con- 
fess that we are whipped on our own ground." 

Professor EL E. Shepherd: "Is evolution in its re- 
stricted sense, as believed by Dr. Woodrow, taught as a 
dogma and impressed on the minds of students, or is it 
simply described in its history and characteristics ? That 
is a very important question. 

"Whatever may be the result of this controversy, I 
hope that no injury may be done to the teaching of science 
in the Seminary. If there is anything that should be 
most desired it is a thorough equipment in this very direc- 
tion, in view of the immense activity and energy of other 
countries in this channel of development. It behooves us 
not to be found in the false attitude of hostility to the ad- 
vance of scientific investigation. It is needed in the 
church, and I have known too many cases in which min- 
isters of the gospel were routed in true Waterloo style by 
reason of their ignorance of scientific inquiry. In gen- 
eral, I would say that nothing which has not been proved, 
or which is not capable of proof, should be taught in a 
theological seminary. In the teaching of philology a 
professor cannot lay down a dogmatic and conventional 
theory and demand its acceptance by his students. Fran- 
cis Bacon did not accept the scheme of the universe as laid 
down by Copernicus, yet in his Novum Organon he laid 
the foundation of our system of inductive philosophy. 
Milton did not accept the true theory of the solar system, 
a fact which is shown by the evidences of his adherence 



476 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



to the Ptolemaic system in his Paradise Lost. And not 
only in Milton's poetry, but the whole of our poetic lit- 
erature up to the middle of the seventeenth century. We 
do not now know that we can teach the Copernican system 
of astronomy as anything absolute and final, because its 
teachings may be eventually and completely reversed. 
And so with the undulatory theory of light, most gen- 
erally accepted, but which is being most vigorously as- 
sailed by Lord Brougham." 

W. A. Clark, Esq. : "If it is true, as has been stated, 
that evolution is a threatening and dangerous thing, there 
is all the more reason for ministers of God to understand 
it fully and resist it or ward off its blows from the church. 
The question is narrowed down to the charge that Dr. 
Woodrow was culpable in that he expressed the opinion 
that the doctrine of evolution was probably true. The 
minority seems to act on the theory that Dr. Woodrow 
inculcates evolution with zeal, and puts his students into 
the world enthusiastic evolutionists. The minority report 
charges that Dr. Woodrow, while free of heresy or any 
opposition to the word of God, is to be censured because 
of his opposition to the received interpretation of that 
word in the Presbyterian Church. 

"I am not able to meet the charge that Dr. Woodrow' s 
teaching is contrary to the received interpretation, because 
neither I, nor anybody else, knows what the received inter- 
pretations are. The theory of the literal creation of the 
earth in six natural days has been decided long ago. Xo- 
body denies now that the universe was developed from 
chaos by the slow operation of millions of years, — that 
evolution is now an accepted fact ; yet the minority report 
condemns even the doctrine of the evolution of the earth. 

"As the Confession of Faith was taken directly from 
the Bible, no hypothesis that fails to contradict the Bible 
can possibly contradict the Confession of Faith. Dr. 
Woodrow has either taught doctrines contradictory of 
scripture, and is therefore guilty of heresy, or he has not 
contradicted the Confession or any part of it. Why are 
we to be relieved from the literal interpretation of the 
creation of the earth and held by an iron grasp to the 
literal interpretation of the creation of man ? Unless it 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



477 



can be proved that the word 'dust/ in the account of the 
creation of man, can mean nothing but dust, everybody 
has the right to his individual judgment of its meaning 
and signification. Dr. Woodrow's system of evolution is 
the product of his own thought and study and investiga- 
tion. It is not the evolution of Darwin. Dr. Woodrow 
believes that in the process of evolution every link, from 
the lowest germ to the highest type, was the work of God. 
Why cannot we worship and glorify God for the wisdom 
and mercy in developing man link by link as well as we 
can wonder at the sudden creation of man from the dead 
earth ? One process is as miraculous as the other." 

Mr. Clark defended the majority report. There could 
be no question that the doctrine of evolution was extra- 
scriptural, as the report said it was. It was an hypothesis 
built upon science entirely unconnected with scripture, 
and Synod had no right to go beyond its sphere of church 
work and denounce a purely scientific theory as true or 
false. Mr. Clark read from the work of Dr. Hodge the 
declaration that evolution, and in the same shape as be- 
lieved by Dr. Woodrow, could only be regarded with the 
most friendly interest. 

Eev. K. A. Webb : " I agree with Dr. Adger that the 
church, and not Dr. Woodrow, is on trial. The minority 
report was framed carefully to draw a distinction between 
Dr. Woodrow and Dr. Woodrow's teachings. The minor- 
ity only ask that Dr. Woodrow's views as published be 
considered. It has been said that the adoption of the 
minority report will elicit shouts of triumph from the 
camp of infidelity. The adoption of the majority report 
will elicit a universal wail from the camp of the saints. 
The charge that the minority has sought to stamp science 
with infamy is false. The war cry of the supporters of 
the majority is 'Remember Galileo.' They forget that 
science tried, condemned, and punished Galileo. Science 
led the church to adopt the Ptolemaic theory, and induced 
her to oppose and persecute the truth. The majority is 
endeavoring to do the same thing, and commit the church 
to the doctrine of evolution as modified, expounded, and 
inculcated in Dr. Woodrow's address. It is claimed that 
the question of evolution is extra-scriptural, and that the 



4-78 



MY LIFE ASS I) TIMES. 



clrurch lias no more to do with it than she has with a 
problem of Euclid. But the Bible and science both talk 
of the creation of man. They intersect each other there, 
and contradict each other. The majority report is start- 
ling, inasmuch as it looks into the future and endeavors To 
guard against the introduction of the hypothesis of evolu- 
tion into the Confession of Faith, by declaring that it can 
never become part of that Confession. But if it is worthy 
to be taught in the Seminary under the authority and 
with the sanction of Synod, it is worthy of incorporation 
into the Confession of Faith. The resolution in the ma- 
jority report, that the theory of evolution cannot be taught 
as an article of faith, is a dodging of the question. Dr. 
Woodrow is not a private person ; he does not speak on 
his own responsibility. With authority of the church be^ 
hind him, he reviews before his classes the arguments for 
and against evolution, and declares that he believes it to 
be probably true. Is that not teaching it and inculcating 
it ? The chair calls for the teaching of the connection be- 
tween scripture and science. The majority report pro- 
claims that there is no connection — that the doctrine of 
evolution is entirely extra-scriptural. There can be no 
connection between parallel lines. 

"I am not the author of the minority report.* Young 
as I am, I would not attempt to guide the action of a body 
like Synod. I simply drew up the minority report. 
Blackstone defines heresy as a denial of some essential 
truth or doctrine of Christianity, publicly avowed and 
obstinately maintained." 

Rev. Dr. Hemphill inquired whether the speaker meant 
to say that if Synod adopted the minority report, it would 
adopt Webster's or Blackstone's definition of heresy. 

Mr. Webb said he intended that Synod should adopt a 
correct definition. 

Dr. Hemphill said there w T as a Presbyterian definition 
of heresy. 

Mr. Webb continued : "I would never vote for any 
action that would accuse Dr. Woodrow of heresy. There 



* Dr. Girardeau stated that, at Mr. Webb's request, he had given? 
him the notes to be used as the basis of the minority report. 



CONTKOVEKSIES OF SCIENCE. 



479 



is no purpose to charge him with heresy. If every man 
who differs with the Confession of Faith is to be accused 
of heresy, a large proportion of the church membership 
would be under ban. The minority denies that Dr. Wood- 
row is guilty of heresy or infidelity. They charge that he 
teaches doctrines contradictory of the Bible as interpreted 
by Presbyterian standards and received by Presbyterians. 
The doctrine of evolution is not extra-scriptural; it is 
contra-scriptural. The word 'dust' is used in the Bible 
one hundred and seven times. In ninety-eight of them it 
is used as inorganic dust. The passage 'who can count 
the dust of Jacob' might be regarded as referring to or- 
ganic beings, but examination shows that it refers en- 
tirely to the immense numbers of his descendants. In 
two other instances it is used to express humility and 
'lowliness. In three others it is used as describing the 
food of serpents, and is therefore regarded as meaning 
flesh and blood. But distinguished commentators have 
decided that it can be construed as meaning that the ser- 
pent eats dust upon his food. I believe, however, that the 
expression 'dust' is a figurative one, applying to the ex- 
treme humbling of the devil typified by the serpent. Of 
the remaining three instances in which 'dust' occurs, two 
are in Genesis and one in Ecclesiastes, and all obviously 
refer to inorganic materials. In one hundred and four 
cases 'dust' is clearly meant to express inorganic material, 
and in the other three the probability is the same way. 
Applying the ordinary rules of interpretation, the pre- 
ponderance of use and general acceptation, the conclusion 
is inevitable that 'dust' in the Bible means inorganic 
material, and that Adam was literally made of inorganic 
dust, instead of being evolved from the loins of a brute. 

"Every figure of speech must have some basis of re- 
ality. Dr. Woodrow in his address has alluded to dust as 
probably a figure of speech. According to that, the real 
meaning of 'dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return' 
is 'of organic matter art thou composed, and into organic 
matter thou shalt be decomposed.' The grave tells us how 
we go, and proves to us that we must return to inorganic 
dust. I contend that Dr. Woodrow is not guilty of heresy, 
but that he has taught doctrine relatively contradictory 



480 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



of scripture — contradictory of the scripture received by 
the Presbyterian Church. The minority report steers 
clear of the charge of heresy and the allegation of infi- 
delity. It directs the prohibition of further teaching of 
doctrines believed to be contradictory of the received in- 
terpretation of God's word." 

Mr. Webb closed with a passionate exhortation to synod 
not to sacrifice the peace and welfare of the church and 
the life of the Seminary for the sake of an unverified hy- 
pothesis, a shadowy, uncertain supposition. 

I proceed now to report the part taken in this debate by 
Rev. John L. Girardeau, D. D. None of the speeches on 
that occasion were very accurately reported. This applies 
specially to the one delivered by my old friend. He sub- 
sequently published a pamphlet of thirty-five pages, en- 
titled "The Substance of Two Speeches on the Teaching 
of Evolution in Columbia Theological Seminary. De- 
livered in the Synod of South Carolina at Greenville, 
S. C, October, 1884." In his introduction to this pam- 
phlet he states : "The greater part of the ensuing re- 
marks is a reproduction verbatim of what was spoken 
from full notes on the floor of the Synod. The same verbal 
accuracy is not vouched for in regard to the whole of 
them." He proceeds to aver that there is no question be- 
fore this Synod of heresy on Dr. Woodrow's part, and if 
there were such a charge, he, as one member of the Synod, 
would join in the vindication of the Professor. He re- 
peated, in the second place, that in his opinion there was 
no ground on which to base such a charge against Dr. 
Woodrow. He goes on at considerable length to declare 
his confidence in the sincerity of Dr. Woodrow's belief in 
the plenary inspiration of the scriptures, and in all the 
vital doctrines of the Calvinistic system. 

On page 6, after all the introductory matter, Dr. Gir- 
ardeau expresses himself thus: a The question which is 
before the Synod is whether it will approve or disapprove 
the action of the Board of Directors, and, by implication, 
the inculcation of Dr. Woodrow's hypothesis of evolution 
in the Theological Seminary." 

To the first portion of this double question, he then 
devotes some eight or nine pages of his pamphlet. And 



CONTEOVEESIES OF SCIENCE. 



481 



on page 15, T find him saying, "The question which in my 
judgment is really before the Synod is in regard to the 
relation between Dr. Woodrow's hypothesis and the Bible 
as our church interprets it." I shall, therefore, pass over 
altogether, as not necessary to this history of the evolution 
controversy, all that he says on the first branch of the 
question, and I proceed to report his speech as it related 
only to the second branch. 

Dr. Girardeau said that in his judgment the question 
really before the Synod was in regard to the relation be- 
tween Dr. Woodrow's hypothesis and the Bible as our 
church interprets it, between this scientific view and our 
Bible, the Bible as it reads to us. This is our court of 
last resort, our ultimate standard of judgment ; and, from 
the nature of the case, must be. This being, as he appre- 
hended it, the state of the question, the first proposition 
which he would lay down for the Synod's consideration 
was : "A scientific hypothesis which has not been proved 
so as to have become an established theory or law, and 
which is contrary to our church's interpretation of the 
Bible, and to her prevailing and recognized views, ought 
not to be inculcated and maintained in our theological 
seminaries." 

He argued this from the nature and design of a theo- 
logical school. It is established and supported by the 
church. It is designed to teach what the church holds and 
oelieves. For it to teach the contrary is to violate its very 
nature and end. And in the event of a view opposed to 
her own being supported by great talents and acquire- 
ments, and as in the case of scientific hypotheses, beyond 
•effective resistance by the other chairs, she actually makes 
arrangements for the overthrow of her own views. 

The speaker proceeds to argue that neither Hebrew and 
Greek nor rhetoric, metaphysics, moral philosophy nor 
science, are to be taught there for their own sakes, but 
always and only as a means to an end, and that end was 
to facilitate the mastery of theology, and to vindicate the 
scriptures against the assaults of infidelity. And fur- 
ther, our Seminary was not designed simply to teach the 
-scriptures. Every theological seminary of every evangel- 
ical church is designed to do this. There must be some- 



482 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



thing distinctive to mark off oivrs from theirs, some spe- 
cific difference ; what is it ? This : ours was designed to 
teach the scriptures as interpreted by the Presbyterian 
church, and especially by the Southern Presbyterian 
Church. This is too plain to need argument. 

An unproved hypothesis ought not to be taught in a 
theological seminary, not only because of the reasons al- 
ready urged, but because such an hypothesis may never be 
verified. In that event the church would be convicted of 
having taught scientific error. She would be obliged to 
retreat from her position and confess her sin. What a 
wretched course it would be for the church to surrender 
her views at the demand of unverified hypotheses ! Who 
would confide in her stability ? Who would not pronounce 
her fickle ? 

The speaker went on to instance cases in which the 
church had held on to her original interpretation of scrip- 
ture in the face of opposing scientific hypotheses, and was 
subsequently acknowledged to be right by the weight of 
scientific evidence itself. One was the hypothesis of the 
specific diversity of the human race, as opposed to the 
church's doctrine of the unity of the race ; another was 
the hypothesis of the extreme antiquity of man as opposed 
to the church's view of the biblical chronology ; another 
was the hypothesis of spontaneous generation ; but Hux- 
ley himself had declared that Pasteur gave it its finishing 
stroke. The church too has held her ground against the 
hypothesis of the original diversity of languages in favor 
of her doctrine of their original unity. The application 
is plain to the hypothesis now under consideration. It 
cannot be left to scientific men to determine what is or is 
not to be taught in our theological seminaries, nor can it 
be left to any professor. Who are to determine this all- 
important question ? Proximately the Board of Direc- 
tors, but only proximately; ultimately the associated 
synods. They have the power to make the constitution of 
the seminary, and therefore to say what is or is not to be 
taught in its chairs. 

The speaker next proceeded to insist that admitting the 
other professors in the Seminary did discuss before their 
students unverified hypotheses, yet none of these were 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



•iS3 



such as the church condemned, The church had con- 
demned the inculcation of Dr. Woodrow's unverified hy- 
pothesis. Hence it was wrong for it to be inculcated. He 
admitted that so long as Dr. Woodrow taught evolution 
expositorily without expressing any opinion in its favor, 
he taught, as the speaker conceived, nothing contradic- 
tory to the Bible. But now when he announces that he 
holds it as probably true, under limitations, the church 
says, "Your view contradicts my interpretation of the 1 
Bible ; and as my interpretation of the Bible is the Bible 
to me, your view contradicts the Bible." The relation, 
then, between his hypothesis and the Bible is, in the 
church's judgment, not that simply of non-contradiction. 
The analogy which is alleged to exist between Dr. Wood- 
row's hypothesis of evolution and the matters specified as 
taught by the professors of Biblical Literature, Church. 
History and Rhetoric, utterly breaks down. 

"Yet," said the speaker, "it may be contended that the- 
professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology positively" 
inculcates metaphysical hypotheses which are extra- 
scriptural, and that therefore the analogy does hold be- 
tween his case and that of the Perkins Professor. He ad- 
mitted that he taught hypotheses which are not to be 
found stated in scientific form in the scriptures. Between 
them and the statements of the Bible there is not the har- 
mony of identity. But the instructor believed that be- 
tween them and the Bible there is the harmony of non- 
contradiction. Further than this, it is believed that be- 
tween them and the church's interpretation of the Bible 
there is harmony, the harmony of non-contradictory state- 
ments. To speak in plain language, it is believed that 
they are perfectly consistent and harmonious with the 
Bible as the church understands and teaches it. And fur- 
ther still, he would say that they are inculcated with the 
end in view, at least partly and chiefly, of evincing the 
harmony between them and our church's interpretation 
of the Bible. The connection between metaphysical 
science and revelation is so taught as to make the former 
a defender of the latter, its vindicator against the assaults 
of a sceptical philosophy. In a word, metaphysical teach- 
ings are so used as not to make it necessary to adjust the 



484 



MY LIFE AIs T D TIMES. 



church's interpretation of the Bible to them, but by them 
to elucidate and strengthen that interpretation. 

"Now, natural science may be employed in the same 
way, and the analogy would then hold between the two 
-chairs. The true question is, whether the actual attitude 
of the two chairs is alike ; whether the real existing pos- 
ture of the Perkins chair towards the Bible as interpreted 
by our church is the real existing posture of the metaphys- 
ical chair towards the same standard. That being the 
true state of the question, no unprejudiced mind can hes- 
itate as to the decision. In the respects mentioned, they 
.are not alike — the analogy practically fails." 

The speaker next referred to its having been argued 
that not only the seminary professors differed from each 
other, but that there are parties in our church differing 
on certain points as much from each other as Dr. Wood- 
row and his opponents, and yet the church tolerates these 
differences, and these different views are publicly and 
freely set forth. These differences relate, for example, 
to predestination and the will, to the imputation of 
Adam's guilt, to the call to the ministry, etc. In reference 
to these matters, it is argued, all are substantially agreed, 
though, upon the question of mode, discrepancies occur. 
So, in this particular case before us, all are agreed in re- 
gard to the fact of creation, but the difference arises with 
reference to the mode, and that ought to be permissible 
.as it is in the other cases. 

"This argument," said Dr. Girardeau, "has not even 
the air of plausibility. One or two plain considerations 
will effectually destroy the analogy upon which it is 
based, and so subvert it along with its foundation. 

"First, the parties who differ upon the questions in- 
stanced — predestination, the will, imputation, the call to 
the ministry, etc. — profess to derive the proofs of their 
respective positions from the scriptures ; both sides ap- 
peal to them for support. But those who maintain the 
hypothesis of evolution profess to derive the reasons in its 
favor from science, while the opponents of evolution get 
their argument from the Bible as well as from science. 
'The difference between the cases is a mighty one. There 
is no analogy between them. 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



485 



"Secondly, both parties to the questions instanced ap- 
peal to our standards for proof of their views. For proof 
of this scientific hypothesis no appeal to the standards is 
possible. Here is another mighty difference. 

"Thirdly, none of the parties to the questions specified 
would maintain views which are plainly contrary to the 
standards. If this scientific hypothesis can be proved to 
be plainly contrary to the standards, it would not stand 
upon the same footing with the subjects upon which dif- 
ference of teaching is allowable. It would be in another 
and peculiar category." 

As the teaching of the professor of Systematic The- 
ology in our Seminary upon the subject of the will was 
involved in this allegation, the Synod would, he trusted, 
indulge him in a few special remarks about that matter. 
"The view taught by that professor is neither extra-scrip- 
tural nor extra-confessional. It confesses to be both scrip- 
tural and confessional. It claims to derive its proofs 
from the Bible, from the doctrine of Calvin, from the 
symbols of the Eeformed Church, and especially from 
the standards of our own church. Whether or not these 
claims have been made good, they have been made. Such 
is the method of proof, as any one may satisfy himself 
who will consult the Professor's published exposition of 
his views in the Southern Presbyterian Review. Now, to 
say that the teaching of that view is on the same footing 
with the teaching of the Perkins Professor's view of evo- 
lution, as he now holds it, is simply to throw facts out of 
account. 

"I maintain," said the speaker, "that a theological 
seminary is not the place, and instruction in its halls not 
the means, to create sentiments adverse to any objection- 
able features of our doctrinal standards, or to attempt 
the inauguration of measures looking to their elimination 
from them. There are other relations sustained by theo- 
logical professors, and other means accessible to them, 
through which they may legitimately exert their influ- 
ence for the attainment of that end. Chiefly there are 
the church courts, which alone have the power to alter the 
standards, and the professors are members of those courts. 
There they may put forth their energies to secure emenda- 



486 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



tions of the constitutional law. Theological professors, 
as such, are absolutely debarred from opposing by their 
teachings the standards of the church. This discussion is 
exceedingly important, contemplated in the light of such 
a question as this. If, as it would appear, we have not 
already settled our rule of action in regard to this weighty 
business, it would be well for us to avail ourselves of this 
great opportunity to accomplish so desirable, so necessary 
an end." 

The speaker next points out how the hypothesis in 
question is opposed to the standards as the formal and 
authoritative interpretation of the scriptures by our 
church. He quotes from the Confession of Faith thus: 
"It pleased God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, for the 
manifestation of the glory of his eternal wisdom, power, 
and goodness, in the beginning to create or make of noth- 
ing the world and all things therein, whether visible or 
invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good" ; 
from the Larger Catechism as follows : "The work of 
creation is that wherein God did, in the beginning, by 
the word of his power, make of nothing the world and all 
things therein for himself, within the space of six days, 
and all very good"; and from the Shorter Catechism 
these words : "The work of creation is God's making all 
things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space 
of six days, and all very good." 

"The hypothesis of evolution is inconsistent with the 
face-meaning of these statements. The connection be- 
tween the words 'of nothing' and the words 'in the space 
of six days,' 'within the space of six days/ justifies this 
view. If the standards had meant to teach creation out 
cf nothing in the first instance only, they would have so 
connected the words 'of nothing' with the words 'in the 
beginning' as definitely to have conveyed that meaning. 
But they also connect the words 'of nothing' with the 
words 'in the space of six days,' so that the impression is 
irresistibly made that they intended to teach that creation 
out of nothing went along with the six days. It does not 
much matter here whether or not the standards mean by 
six days six literal days of twenty-four hours each. If 
they could be diverted from their face-meaning and con- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



487 



strued to mean six periods, still the doctrine that creation 
out of nothing proceeded concurrently with those periods, 
at least in connection with the beginning of each, is con- 
trary to Dr. Woodrow's view that creation out of nothing 
occurred in absolutely the first instance only, and that 
the evolution of the earth, of the lower animals, and prob- 
ably of Adam's body, was by the process of mediate crea- 
tion." 

At length, on page 27 of his pamphlet, Dr. Girardeau 
takes up the hypothesis of evolution. He says the church 
holds certain views concerning the formation of man's 
body in the first instance, and the hypothesis of evolution 
under consideration is contrary to those views. And he 
proceeds to compare them after this fashion : 

"1. The hypothesis is that the dust from which Adam's 
body was formed was organic dust. The church's view 
is that it was inorganic dust — the words 'of the ground' 
designating the sort of dust ; that the sentence 'unto dust 
shaft thou return' and the inspired words in Ecclesiastes, 
'Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was,' indicate 
not animal forms, but what is commonly known as dust 
and so universally called. 

"2. The hypothesis is that Adam's body was evolved out 
of, descended with modification from, a long line of ani- 
mal ancestry reaching back for a protracted period. The 
church's view is that Adam's body was formed of dust by 
a sudden, supernatural, constructive act of God. 

"3. The hypothesis is that Adam as to his body was 
born of animal parents. The church's view is that Adam 
as to his body was not born at all — that he had no animal 
parents. 

a 4. The hypothesis is that Adam as to his body was at 
first in an infantile condition, and grew to the stature of 
a man. The church's view is that Adam as to his body 
never was an infant ; that he did not grow, but was sud- 
denly and supernaturally formed in the full possession of 
mature bodily powers. 

"5. The hypothesis is that the existence of Adam's 
body preceded for years the formation of Eve's body. 
The church's view is that the formation of Eve's body fol- 
lowed closely upon the formation of Adam's. 



488 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



"Thus in five particulars it has been shown that the 
hypothesis before us is contrary to the church's views. 

"But are the church's views what they have now been 
assumed to be ? and are they here prevailing and recog- 
nized views ? Of that I will proceed to furnish proof. 

"It will not be denied that up to the time of the emer- 
gence of this controversy, occasioned by the delivery and 
publication of Dr. Woodrow's address, the church's gen- 
eral views were what I have represented them to be. How 
has it been since ? What are the views of the church 
which have been developed, brought out into light and 
maintained during the discussion which has occurred ? 

"I cite, first, the faculty of Columbia Seminary. Every 
member of it has declared his inability to concur in Dr. 
Woodrow's interpretation of scripture so far as his hy- 
pothesis of the evolution of Adam's body is concerned. 

"I mention next the Board of Directors of Columbia 
Seminary. Every member of it has declared his in- 
ability to concur in Dr. Woodrow's view ; the minority of 
course, and the majority also in the paper which they 
adopted, and which was reported to the Synod. 

"I would refer, too, to the religious journals of our 
church. Of these there are eight. One of them is Dr. 
Woodrow's own paper, and must therefore be thrown out 
of account. Of the other seven, only one has advocated 
Dr. Woodrow's view. Here, then, are six of the old es- 
tablished journals of the church which fail to concur in 
the hypothesis in question. Is it not to be inferred that 
they represent the opinion of the great majority of the 
church ? 

"ISTo, it cannot be successfully denied that the over- 
whelming mass of the views of our church, as also of all 
evangelical churches, is opposed to the Irypothesis of the 
Perkins Professor." 

Dr. Girardeau proceeds through several pages to take 
very brief notices of points that had been made in the 
course of the previous debate in favor of the majority 
report, and gives his testimony that they have no force. 
The only other parts of his revised speech which I deem it 
justly necessary to publish, are the following : 

"It is vain to say, as has been said, that although, in 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



489 



obedience to his convictions, he will teach the probable 
truth of his hypothesis, he will not urge its acceptance 
upon the students. It will not be necessary for so able a 
teacher, after giving his reasons in favor of its probable 
truth, to exhort his pupils to receive it. 

"The point, it is urged again and again, the only point 
to which Dr. Woodrow directs his instructions is the con- 
nection between this hypothesis and the Bible. That is 
all. Yes ; but what sort of connection ? Why, this : the 
hypothesis being probably true, the ordinary interpreta- 
tion of the Bible is probably untrue. It is modified by the 
hypothesis. It is to the teaching in a seminary of that 
kind of connection that objection is made, and the Synod 
is asked to oppose their prohibition." 

Bev. J. L. Martin, M. D., D. D., said : "The one point 
of difference between the contending parties is that one 
side claims that the Holy Spirit probably meant inorganic 
dust, while the other claims that the Holy Spirit probably 
meant organic dust. There is no doubt that in the Bible 
the word dust often means inorganic dust. All admit that. 
There is some dispute as to whether it is ever used to 
signify organic dust. There is no inspired interpreter 
to tell us the meaning of the word. Each reader must in- 
terpret the term in the light of its own context, 'Dust 
shalt thou eat/ was said to the serpent. What did the 
serpent eat ? Organic dust. ' It is claimed that the ser- 
pent represented the devil, and I challenge any man to 
show that the devil eats inorganic dust. In other parts 
of God's word the term dust, as I must believe, means 
organic dust beyond possibility of doubt. 'Dust thou art,' 
said God to the father of the human race. What was he 
then ? A rational animal with an immortal spirit de- 
rived from the breath of God. Standing before God 
with hands and feet and eyes and teeth and tongue, was 
Adam then inorganic dust ? That is a part of God's word, 
we are told, it is heresy to expound. If Dr. Woodrow can- 
not expound it in the Seminary, none of us can expound 
it from the pulpit. 

" ' Unto dust shalt thou return,' does not mean a re- 
turn to inorganic dust. When, in the language of Job, 
after a man's skin worms destroy his flesh, he becomes 



490 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



assimilated with the worms, and is organic dust. When 
the enemies of Daniel were cast into the lion's den they 
did not become inorganic dust. Job said, 'I also am 
formed out of the clay/ and in another place he asks if he 
shall be returned to the dust. Job said God formed him 
of clay, of dust, as he did Adam — formed him of dust 
from the loins of his father and mother. Was that in- 
organic dust ? 

"So also Solomon says, 'Then shall the dust return to 
the earth as it was, and the spirit to God who gave it.' 

"I call attention to these facts : 1. Here is a statement 
applying to all men, not to Adam only. 2. They are called 
'dust,' when the spirit has departed, that is, their dead 
body, or corpse, but this is certainly organic dust — still 
organized into a dead human body. 3. They are said to 
return to the 'earth,' whence came Adam's body. 4. c As 
it. was.' As it goes into the earth it certainly is organic 
dust. The point that strikes me very forcibly is that we 
have here the word 'dust' applied to all men as to their 
bodies ; yet in such a connection as makes certain that 
here at least 'dust' is organic. So in Ecclesiastes iii. 20, 
'All go unto one place ; all are of the dust, and all turn 
to dust again.' The context shows unmistakably that Sol- 
omon is running the parallel between brute and man as 
to their bodies. He does not run a contrast — except in 
verse twenty-one, as to their 'spirit.' He says 'all' are 
of the 'dust' — brute and man ; further that 'all' turn to 
'dust' again. These affirmations are made of the 'sons 
of men' and of the 'beasts' (verse nineteen) equally ; they 
apply to their bodies and to their bodies alone. If now 
'beast,' according to Solomon, came 'of the dust,' and yet 
no doubt came by evolution, then, in the name of reason, 
who can say that because the Bible says man came 'of the. 
dust,' therefore he could not have come by evolution? 
Evidently we are shut up to this : If 'of the dust' denies 
evolution of 'man,' equally so does it deny evolution of 
the 'beasts.' Per contra, if 'of the dust' does not con- 
tradict evolution of 'beasts,' equally so it does not con- 
tradict evolution of the 'sons of men.' We know that all 
the 'sons of men' that Solomon had ever seen came by 
evolution, and yet he affirms of them 'all are of the dust.' 



COXTEOVEESIES OE SCIEXCE. 



491 



So again, all the beasts that Solomon had ever seen came 
by evolution, yet of them also he affirms, 'All are of the 
dust.' Manifestly, according to Solomon, there is no 
more contradiction betAveen dust and evolution in regard 
to 'men' than in regard to 'beasts.' In Ecclesiastes xii. 1 
he affirms, 'Creator' of men. Ergo he saw no contradic- 
tion between creation and evolution. God created Solo- 
mon of the dust. Yet he created Solomon by natural gen- 
eration. Isaac's body and that of J ohn the Baptist were 
undoubtedly of God's creation, and undoubtedly 'of the 
dust,' yet in both these instances the scripture account 
would lead us to recognize, if not a clear case of the super- 
natural, yet at least there was something extraordinary 
in their generation. 'Evolution,' 'creation/ 'of the dust,' 
are ergo not contradictories. 

"Dr. Woodrow's opponents do exactly what they charge 
him with doing. They take a text and force it to mean 
everywhere Avhat it means once. Dr. Woodrow does not 
do that. If he had done it, he would never have written 
that the hypothesis of evolution is 'probably true.' If he 
had done as his opponents did and violated the rules of 
interpretation by forcing a word to mean in one place 
what it did in another, he would have written that evolu- 
tion is a demonstrated hypothesis. Dr. TVoodrow's posi- 
tion is that the expression 'dust' is an ambiguous one. 
As the Bible has left the question an open one, the child 
of God can go through that open door into the domain of 
science to seek light. If the knowledge of what material 
man was made of was necessary for the saving of souls, 
or an essential matter of faith, the Bible would never 
have left the question involved in doubt. That shut and 
silent Bible is his passport into the regions of science, 
and gives him permission to investigate his ancestry for 
himself. 

"Brethren on the other side object to the word 'extra- 
scriptural :' if they don't like that, they can take the log- 
ical reverse, and call it 'intra-scriptural,' and admit that 
evolution is in the Bible. They object to non-contradic- 
tion as applied to the theory, and seem to be equally 
averse to contradiction. I may say for my side that we 
have piped unto our opponents, and they would not 



492 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



dance, and mourned unto them and they have not la- 
mented. 

"I do not see why an immediate vote should not be 
taken. I am as anxious to go home as anybody, but I 
propose to stand by these guns until the ship goes down. 
Synod may murder and bury this truth if it sees fit. I 
will not stand by the grave with streaming eyes, but with 
confidence that God will give it strength to rule in his 
own good time. I challenge any man to say that the 
theory of evolution is not extra-scriptural." 

The Rev. H. B. Pratt : "I say so." 

"Put him on record, Mr. Clerk. Put it away in the 
archives that my brother, while believing that the doctrine 
of evolution is in the Bible, objects to having it taught in 
the Theological Seminary ! Because there is something 
about man in the Bible, any study of man is called intra- 
scriptural. It might as well be said that because the sun 
and moon and stars are in the Bible, we must go there to 
study astronomy ; that because the earth is in the Bible, 
we must go there to study geography. It is claimed that 
the doctrine is extra-confessional. 

"It has been declared that the doctrine of evolution 
shocks the instincts of the human heart. Instinct is 
often not from God, but from training. It is said the 
sensibilities of the church are shocked. The sensibilities 
of the Jewish church were shocked when they heard of 
the Babe of Bethlehem. Instinct is frequently opposed 
to common sense. I have wondered how any human 
mind ever originated the idea that there was some bearing 
of the evolution theory on the human body of the Saviour. 
There is nothing in that. There is no connection between 
evolution and the human body of Christ that should shock 
any properly educated Bible student. The first promise 
spoke of 'the seed of the woman' — the woman who was not 
descended from the brutes, but created by God from the 
body of Adam. Jesus Christ in his human nature did 
not descend from Adam by ordinary generation. He 
was not a descendant of Adam, but came from Eve to 
Mary. When Christ was on earth he ate bread and meat, 
and they were assimilated with his flesh and bone, and be- 
came part of the actual body of the Son of God. Is that a 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIEXCE. 



493 



shocking statement ? It is true, however. I do not see 
the use of such talk as has been heard about shocked sen- 
sibilities from this platform. It is a substitution of 
rhetoric and stage-acting and figures of speech for plain, 
scripture-informed common sense." 

Dr. Martin proceeded to notice what he called Dr. 
Girardeau's main pivot, namely: "I am not prepared to 
say Dr. Woodrow' s doctrine contradicts (1) the Bible, in 
its highest and absolute sense; (2) or any essential fea- 
ture of evangelical religion; (3) or any vital point of 
Calvinism." But he maintained that it did contradict the 
Bible as expounded in our standards — in certain particu- 
lars which he proceeded to enumerate. 

"Xow I call attention to this point : If, according to 
Dr. Girardeau, Woodrow and the standards contradict, no 
matter in what, or in how many particulars, and this was 
so clear to Dr. Girardeau's mind, and yet it was not clear 
to his mind that Woodrow and the Bible contradict each 
other, then clearly, just to that extent, no matter how 
much or how little, the standards must vary from the 
Bible. If so, then amend the standards so as to be in 
perfect harmony with the Bible ; and then, since Wood- 
row and the Bible did not contradict, so also Woodrow 
and the standards could not contradict. Instead, how- 
ever, of seeking to amend the standards, they were seek- 
ing to amend Woodrow. Instead of prosecuting the 
standards for not being in perfect harmony with the 
Bible, they were prosecuting Woodrow, because he was, in 
their judgment, not in harmony with the standards !" 

Dr. Martin continued: u Synod has just as much right 
to discuss how Dr. Woodrow will vote at the next elec- 
tion as to discuss his extra-scriptural views on evolution. 
The question of his vote could be brought up just as this 
question has been. It might be argued that as the mem- 
bers of the Southern Presbyterian Church are Demo- 
cratic to the core, and the Seminary is supported by Dem- 
ocrats, Dr. Woodrow' s statement that he would probably 
vote for Blaine would be taken as likely to injure the in- 
stitution, and he could have been investigated by the 
b»oard, and brought before Synod to answer for his extra- 
scriptural politics, just as he has been brought to answer 



404 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



for his extra-scriptural opinion on evolution — because 
both are opposed to the general sentiment of the church. 

"I contend that the purpose for which Dr. Woodrow's 
chair was established was for teaching the connection be- 
tween science and the Bible, and that he has done that and 
nothing else. He has not taught or inculcated the theory 
of evolution. He has taught, as he was bound to do, the 
connection between the probable hypothesis of evolution 
and the revealed word. There is no inconsistency in the 
action of the majority of the board in endorsing Dr. 
Woodrow's course while repudiating his theory, for his 
teaching was at the inevitable and direct demand of hi? 
duty. He has been brought before the only lawful tri- 
bunal and tried, and a verdict of mot guilty' rendered, 
and yet Synod is asked to sentence him to have his mouth 
sealed unlawfully. 

"As my view on evolution has been extensively pub- 
lished in several ways, I have not thought it necessary to 
define it. I think it well, however, to say that I am not 
a convert to Dr. Woodrow's theory of evolution. I neither 
believe nor disbelieve it. I am an humble inquirer after 
light." 

He then proceeded to describe the effect of the adoption 
of the minority report. "Students in Dr. Woodrow's 
class-room, asking him for information regarding the evo- 
lution theory or the meaning of the word 'dust' in certain 
places in the Bible, would be informed that persistence in 
such requests would be rebellion against the associated 
synods, which had forbidden the discussion of those sub- 
jects in the Seminary. I do not know whether or not the 
student would be allowed to ask the information he 
wanted from any of the other professors. At any rate, the 
man who has been especially selected and commissioned 
to investigate such subjects would have his mouth closed. 

"Evolution is a living question. In the hands of infidel 
scientists it is used to contradict the Bible, and by the 
articles regarding it in secular papers the impression is 
left on the minds of thousands that if evolution is true, 
the Bible is false. Dr. Woodrow shows and teaches his 
students that if the truth of evolution should be demon- 
strated, the Bible would not be contradicted. If evolution 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



495 



should prove to be false science, it would still not contra- 
dict God's word. He sends them forth armed against all 
the assaults of scientific infidelity. The minority report 
proposes to tie his hands from supplying this armor. 

"I can never forget that it was the lectures in Dr. 
Woodrow's class-room that checked me in a wild down- 
ward career to infidelity and atheism and cheerless blank 
despair. 

"Dr. Woodrow has taught his students of the hypoth- 
esis of the specific diversity of races, and has disproved it ; 
he has given them the hypothesis of the sun being the 
centre, and has proven it. !$o objection is made to either. 
The only fault the minority seem to find is with the un- 
proven hypothesis — one still in doubt, and neither proven 
nor disproven. I deny that Dr. Woodrow 'teaches' the 
doctrine of evolution. He handles it to show it in its con- 
nection with the Bible, and presents it as an unproven 
hypothesis. 

"In order to secure the passage of the minority report, 
five questions ought to be answered and proved : First, 
What is the accepted interpretation ? Second, What is 
the scripture so interpreted ? Third, Where is the 
church's accepted interpretation ? Fourth, Is this 'ac- 
cepted'' interpretation the true interpretation ? Fifth, 
Wherein does Dr. Woodrow contradict either (1) the 
church's accepted interpretation? or (2) the true inter- 
pretation ? 

"There is no inconsistency in the action of the majority 
of the board. It had a perfect right to say that while it 
did not agree with Dr. Woodrow's opinion that the hy- 
pothesis of evolution was probably true, it approved of 
his teaching the connection between that doctrine and the 
Bible. The action of the majority of the board places the 
church in the only absolutely safe position she can obtain. 
If the hypothesis of evolution should be disproven, the 
church would not have been committed to it in any way. 
If it should be proven, she would not have been com- 
mitted against it. In either case the church's ministers 
would have knowledge of the subject and understand that 
the scripture is not contradicted. The question of how 
far Dr. Woodrow's scientific views should coincide with 



496 



MY LIFE AKD TIMES. 



those of the church before he should teach them in the 
Seminary is no question at all. Dr. Woodrow cannot be 
judged by the standards of the other professors who teach 
theology. The church has a theological creed and the 
divine right to shape one, but she has no scientific creed 
and no possible right to make one. She has nothing to do 
with science as a church. ~No member of Synod would 
vote to amend the Confession so as to declare a belief that 
the world is a sphere. Why ? Because you would have 
to go outside the word of God to prove it. It is so with 
the evolution theory. The church as a church has no 
right to an opinion about it, and no right to inquire Dr. 
Woodrow's opinion about it, so long as he shows that it 
does not contradict the scripture. Calvin taught that the 
church should investigate only where the Bible guided 
her, and stop short where its light failed. 'Preach the 
word. 7 The Saviour's last command was to 'teach all 
things that I have commanded you.' We are told to teach 
nothing else. God has fixed a great gulf between science 
and the Bible. 'No man ever studied science with the 
Bible without going wrong ; no man ever tried to save his 
soul by the laws of nature without being equally wrong. 
The church has as much to do with Dr. Woodrow's politics 
as it has with his scientific views, and has nothing to do 
with either. Orthodoxy in politics and orthodoxy in 
science has nothing to do with orthodoxy in Presbyte- 
rianism. 

"In case Dr. Woodrow's mouth is closed on the evolu- 
tion question, what will the Seminary do with the students 
who come there from the colleges and universities or from 
a course of reading, eager to know about this great subject 
of evolution, and seeking light on it and on its relation 
to revelation ? You may silence such inquiries by telling 
the inquirer to content himself with reading his Bible, 
but you will have an inquiry living in an active mind 
which may find a destructive or dangerous answer any- 
where. 

"If any one feels that he knows absolutely the meaning 
of the Holy Ghost in the use of the word 'dust' in the sec- 
ond chapter of Genesis, and that it must be inorganic 
dust, then he can vote for the minority report. If he has 



CO^TKOVEKSIES OF SCIENCE. 



497 



a doubt on the subject, he will have to sustain the ma- 
jority. Sifted down and run through the crucible to the 
last analysis, that is the substance of the whole subject, 
and the point of difference between the two reports. One 
of them, the minority, must take the ground that that dust 
in the second chapter of Genesis means absolutely and in- 
variably inorganic dust. The other says it is probably 
organic dust. The majority report is entitled to the 
benefit of the doubt." 

Rev. W. J. McKay, of the Board of Directors of the 
Seminary, said : "What are the constitutional limitations 
on the teaching of the professors ? They are laid down in 
the Constitution of the associated synods, and the board 
is required to hold the professors to them. The only lim- 
itation I can find is that, on being inaugurated, the teach- 
ers should bind themselves to accept the standards of the 
church, and to teach nothing contrary to them. All are 
agreed that the standards are the church's interpretation 
of the Bible. But who is to interpret the standards ? 
What is a received interpretation ? It is the interpreta- 
tion of popular sentiment in the church and of the lower 
church courts. No authority should interpret the laws 
it does not make, and surely professors in their teaching 
and the Board of Directors in their management ought 
not to be controlled by such a shifting thing as public 
feeling." 

Dr. Girardeau rose and said the whole question was, in 
his view, one simply of executive policy. "There is no de- 
mand for any dogmatic declaration or any theory. The 
board is in the position of an executive committee of 
Synod, with its acts subject to review." 

Mr. McKay continued : "How far is the church respon- 
sible for the teaching of any of its teachers, professors, or 
preachers ? Dr. Girardeau teaches certain views of the 
diaconate, but the church does not endorse them. In this 
present case the church is responsible for the fact of Dr. 
Woodrow's teaching the connection between evolution 
and the scripture, because he teaches it under her orders, 
but she is not responsible for his private scientific opin- 
ions or for his expression of them. A certain amount of 
latitude is demanded. 



498 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



"It has been stated that Dr. Woodrow is not on trial- 
His' principles and beliefs are on trial, however, and he 
cannot be separated from them. He must stand or go 
down with them. Dr. Girardeau has expressed his will- 
ingness to put a shield between Dr. Woodrow and the 
charge of heresy, but the paper he defends does not." 

Dr. Girardeau said he was willing to have the paper 
amended to do so. 

Mr. McKay said he might be, but those who prepared it 
had not incorporated any such amendment. "And it is 
needed. One paper assuming to represent the church has 
announced 'heresy in Columbia Seminary,' and has not 
only sought thereby to injure the Seminary and its pro- 
fessors, but to put a black mark on every student who has 
come from the institution in the last twenty-five years. 
They are also on trial. 

"If the action of the majority of the board is sustained. 
Dr. Woodrow will still be amenable to trial, and can be- 
brought up for trial in a regular way. The cry of 'danger' 
and 'heresy' has softened down to a whisper that the 
teaching of Dr. Woodrow may contradict the interpreta- 
tion by the standards of the scriptures. But it does not 
even do that, for the only mention by the standards of the 
material composition of Adam is in the Catechism, where 
the Bible's language, 'the dust of the ground' is simply 
reproduced without comment, the Westminster compilers 
having w T isely omitted to say whether the dust was organic 
or inorganic." 

Dr. Hemphill moved that Dr. Woodrow be requested 
to speak at half-past seven o'clock, and that after his 
speech, debate be cut off, he having the reply to anything 
further said. So ordered. 

At the night session Professor James Woodrow took 
the platform and spoke in his own defence : 

"I met the Synod nineteen years ago, during the dark 
times that tried men's souls. Then I communed with my 
brethren touching the same institution whose interests are 
now occupying so much of your attention." Dr. Wood- 
row reviewed briefly the circumstances of that time when 
its nearest friends were ready to give up the ship and 
retire. "It is a source of comfort to me that at that time- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIEXCE. 



19 9> 



I was able to do something to restore hope and reanimate 
the beloved institution. 

"For thirty-two years I have been your servant. You 
have known me, known my manner of life, and tried me, 
and know if you have ever known anything in me worthy 
of distrust." 

"As I have sat in this body and heard the discussions, I 
have sometimes wondered of whom you were speaking. 
When I heard words of praise, I knew they were not de- 
served ; when I heard words of blame, I felt that I had 
not merited them. I am not guilty of the things said and 
reported concerning me. I have heard it said that I am 
not on trial. I know I am not. There is no indictment 
against me as against one on trial. I know that the- 
church is a law-abiding body, and having thrown its pro- 
tecting a?gis around me, it will not take my ecclesiastical 
life from me by lynch law. 

"But things have been said that might have announced 
to me that I am on trial. There has been talk of offences, 
and discussions of whether or not I could be accused of 
heresy. It has been taken for granted that there is some 
accusation against me. 

"I have not been summoned here as I would have been 
if I were a prisoner at the bar. I have come voluntarily. 
I know not hoAv to describe this — shall I call it process t 
Is it a process ? I ask pardon if I misuse terms. I am 
in such profound ignorance of whether I am a prisoner or 
not that I can hardly select the proper terms." 

"The Board of Directors asked me to deliver an address 
explaining the connection between evolution and the Bible- 
as taught in my class-room, with the statement that the 
assaults of infidel science by evolution and other insidious- 
errors were injuring the cause of Christ. For years I 
had been teaching that the theory of evolution, true or 
false, does not contradict the scriptures. The board has 
reported to the synods, rejoicing that no evolution or 
other insidious errors were taught in the Seminary." Dr. 
TToodrow then read the resolutions of the majority of the 
board, adopted after considering his address. "Such 
words from such men, the representatives of the Synod, 
are reward enough for the labors of twenty-four years.. 



500 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



They satisfy me that I am. not walking far astray in the 
paths of infidelity and heresy. 

"In the year 1857 the initial steps for the establish- 
ment of the Perkins chair were taken, under resolutions 
reciting the attacks of science on religion, and recom- 
mending the creation of a chair of natural science in con- 
nection with revealed religion. I was called to that chair 
without my solicitation, and without word or act of mine 
to secure it. I was taken from other work for the church. 
I was teaching by your authority and in your name,* and 
spending as much of my time as I possibly could in 
preaching to the poor and neglected in the regions round 
about. You knew, Moderator — that is, the church knew 
— what my opinions were ; I had been serving you for 
eight years. I taught one and another of those who are to- 
night in this house, principles which, since I came here 
into this city of Greenville, I have heard denounced as 
contrary to the Confession of Faith and the standards of 
our church. The very men who called me to that chair 
Tiad either sat under me, or had been my associates, or had 
been members of the Board of Trustees of Oglethorpe 
University, or had been of those who confirmed or ap- 
proved of my nomination and my teaching. Consequently 
you were not electing some one who might have enter- 
tained opinions that were wholly and grossly different 
from those which you would have taught the theological 
students of this church. 

"What was I to teach ? To what was I called ? At the 
earliest moment I met the directors to consult as to what I 
was to do. The chair was a new one. Xo other seminary 
had one like it. How was I, a youth, to know what to do 
without the guidance of the church? I told them my 
plans and views, and what I proposed to do, and received 
their approval. Since then I have followed those in- 
structions, and walked strictly in the narrow path pointed 
out to me." 

He then read from his inaugural address, setting forth 
his conception of his duties, in which he had said that one 

* He had been for eight years professor of Xatural Science in 
Oglethorpe University when the Synod of Georgia, by election, 
transferred him to Columbia Seminary. 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



501 



of them would be to show that when science and the Bible 
were, or were supposed to be, contradictory, it was either 
false science or a false interpretation of the Bible. "Now 
that I teach that certain popular ideas floating in the 
public mind of the meaning of certain words are wrong, 
will you punish me for it % If I am to teach only what 
is pronounced by some ecclesiastical body an established 
and proved dogma, why did they not tell me so twenty- 
three years ago ? 

"In those twenty-three years I have learned something 
— the chief thing; the entire absence of discord between 
true science and the revealed word. I have not been 
handling science for its own sake. In no case have I 
taught it but for the purpose for which I was ordered to 
teach or handle it by the voice of the church, representing 
the voice of God. The only thing I have ever told my 
students that it is their duty to receive from me is that 
they are to bow to the Lord God Almighty, and to nothing 
else ; that they are to be freemen in the Lord. I am to be 
forbidden to inculcate ? I have never inculcated except in 
the sense I have told you. To science as science nobody 
has ever heard me allude within the walls of that Sem- 
inary. 

"The chief purpose of the chair, as expressed in the res- 
olution creating it, is to 'refute the objections of infidel 
scientists.' When two witnesses contradict each other, 
do lawyers endeavor to make them say the same thing ? 
Do they not rather appeal to judge and jury with some 
reasonable hypothesis to remove the apparent contradic- 
tion ? 

"I warned the church when I took my vows that I 
would teach that the teachings of geology regarding the 
antiquity of the world are true. It was understood that I 
would not teach that the world was but one hundred and 
forty-four hours older than Adam ; that I would say that 
I knew that the world was so old that the mind of man 
cannot grasp the years or the centuries or the thousands 
of years of its age. But I have never sought to teach that 
the Confession of Faith means anything but that the 
world was created in six days. There is not one word 
or syllable in all the Confession of Faith or Catechisms 



.502 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



that I would wish to have changed, evolutionist though I 
may be. There is nothing in them to contradict my be- 
liefs. In the word of God there is not one word or syl- 
lable I do not believe." 

"What right has the church to teach anything regard- 
ing natural science ? What right has the church to do 
anything ? I will read the commission. As Christ was 
about to leave this world in the body, he said to the as- 
sembled eleven, 'Go ye into all the world and teach the 
gospel to every creature.' There is the commission. If 
the church authoritatively undertakes to teach anything 
outside the Bible, she is transgressing the law and adding 
to it and bringing upon herself the plagues written in the 
book. But when a duty is commanded or a right conferred 
by competent authority, everything involved with the ful- 
fillment of that duty or the enjoyment of that right goes 
with the command or the grant. One of these duties is to 
train and educate men to preach the gospel by the best 
means devised by the wisdom and knowledge given us by 
God. The church may not only teach those things that 
tend to prepare and equip preachers of the word, but it 
may do anything tending to aid the preaching of the gos- 
pel. It may buy land or exchange, it may build houses, all 
with the limitation that the acts done are to promote the 
preaching of the gospel with the greatest power. Its 
teaching is not limited to the seminary. It may go 
into primary schools and teach the children their alpha- 
bet ; it may send boys to schools and colleges. The church 
may as truly teach mathematics as theology, provided 
it is for the equipment of men to preach and teach the 
gospel. 

"What is the responsibility of the church for my teach- 
ing? Is it to examine every word I say to see if it is 
strictly correct ? Does it examine the chemistry taught by 
Professor Martin in Davidson ? When chemistry was 
revolutionized a few years ago, was that professor ex- 
pected to come before Synod and tell them he would teach 
the new chemistry ? Or was he to teach the old chemistry 
that he knew was wrong because he had begun teaching 
it ? With all due respect, what does Synod know about 
•chemistry ? When any man employs a lawyer, does he 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



503 



•require him to submit to him all his pleadings and tell 
him the details of management ? When a pastor is called 
to a church, is he instructed how to preach, and whether 
he shall use prose or poetry ? The only right the church 
has to interfere with any of its teachers is when they teach 
that which is contrary to the word of God as interpreted 
by the church standards. No man sitting as a presbyter 
can dare, as such, to have an opinion on any subject ex- 
cept as that subject is related to the word of God. You 
have no right or authority to discuss or consider any of 
my opinions except as they relate to the word. No au- 
thority is given you, and when you take it you step be- 
yond your rights and grasp at things which the Lord, the 
King, has kept out of your hands." 

Dr. Woodrow then proceeded to analyse the report of 
the minority of the Committee on the Seminary. "I know 
that every word of affection and respect for myself ut- 
tered by the gentleman who drew that paper (Dr. Gir- 
ardeau) is sincere and true. But the warmth of his 
heart has on this occasion interfered with the usual clear 
operations of his head. Where is the necessity for saying 
that the question of my heresy is not before the Synod ? 
If it is not, what is the use of saying anything about it ? 
Yet the fourth resolution charges me with teaching doc- 
trine contrary to the teaching of scripture as interpreted 
by the church standards — that is, contrary to the right 
and true interpretation of scripture." Dr. Woodrow read 
from the Form of Government defining as an offence the 
holding or teaching of anything contrary to the word of 
God, and the definition of heresy as false teaching likely 
to do much injury. "My opponents declare that my false 
teachings will do vast harm. I acknowledge that I have 
spread them industriously. The charges against me are 
the gravest described in the Form of Government, and 
if they can be made good, will require my deposition, 
unless I can use the excuse provided in the Form, and 
class myself as a person of feeble understanding. There 
is comfort in the thought that my accuser does not really 
hold me to be amenable to these dreadful charges; for 
though he has known my views in general for twenty-four 
years, being much of that time in the same institution, he 



504 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



has never breathed to me that I was guilty of such enor- 
mities. 

"The second resolution holds me up, not as contradict- 
ing the Bible in its highest and absolute sense, but as con- 
tradicting the interpretations of the Bible by the Presby- 
terian Church in the United States. 

"Is Synod to publish its shame to the world by speaking 
of the Bible in 'its highest and absolute sense/ thereby 
implying that there is a higher sense than the church 
standards contain — that the standards are not true \ 
When a man who has learned geology comes to his min- 
ister to inquire the way of life, but distrusting the Bible 
because he knows the statement that the world was made 
in six literal days is untrue, is the minister to be silent 
because the Confession seals his lips '? Or is he to say, 
'The Bible does not teach that lie. The Bible is true. It 
does not teach that the world is but six thousand years old.' 
And yet 5 Moderator, you are asked, by adopting this reso- 
lution, to proclaim to the world that these two things are 
entirely different. 

"The third resolution condemns as inexpedient and in- 
judicious the declaration of the Board of Directors that 
the relations between science and scripture are plainly, 
correctly, and satisfactorily set forth in Dr. Woodrow's 
address. Now, Moderator, observe what is commended 
here — just one thing and nothing else. There is no ap- 
proval of Dr. Woodrow's ideas about evolution; what is 
commended is simply Dr. Woodrow's setting forth of 
the relations between the teachings of science and those 
of God's word, namely, that, when rightly interpreted, they 
do not contradict each other. The board understood well 
that the professor has not been teaching natural science to 
his students, but simply setting forth the relations be- 
tween science and scripture." 

Recurring again to the fourth resolution, Dr. Wood- 
row said: "It charges that the board has virtually ap- 
proved my inculcating and defending an unverified hy- 
pothesis. Moderator, they did nothing of the kind ; the 
Board of Directors neither virtually nor otherwise ap- 
proved of the inculcating and defending the hypothesis of 
evolution. If they had, they would, when speaking in 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



505 



the name of the Lord, have arrogated to decide a question 
which the Lord had not committed to them. They would 
have been expressing an opinion that an hypothesis of 
natural science was true, which neither they nor this 
Synod, speaking in the name of the Lord, are competent 
to do. 

"Now, let us ask what are the facts as to the opinion of 
experts touching evolution ? I do not like, any more than 
is necessary, to refer to myself in any way, but in this 
case I must be allowed to stand here as a witness for the 
time being. Beginning in the far northeast, at Harvard 
University, there are the distinguished professor of Bot- 
any, Asa Gray, and a number of young men associated 
with him ; and near by Alexander Agassiz, the son of the 
distinguished Louis Agassiz, and very like his father in 
the extent of his knowledge, however unlike him in his be- 
lief on this particular subject — all evolutionists. Coming 
to the University at Providence, Brown University, there 
is the son of a Congregational minister, Professor Pack- 
ard, who is a pronounced evolutionist. At Yale there is 
the venerable Dana, and there are the learned Marsh, and 
Verrill, and Brewer, and the younger Dana — all evolu- 
tionists. And let me say in passing, not a single anti- 
evolutionist. At the Academy of Natural Science in 
Philadelphia there are the earnest Professor Heilprin, 
and Cope and Leidy and Lewis ; they are all evolution- 
ists, and there is not an anti-evolutionist. At Johns Hop- 
kins University the learned professor of Biology is an 
evolutionist, and there is another evolutionist, Professor 
Brooks. While I cannot say of my own personal knowl- 
edge, I am told that in the University of Virginia the 
same doctrine is taught. May I go on % What does Pro- 
fessor Blake teach by your authority in Davidson Col- 
lege ? If I make a mistake, I hope that any one who 
knows that I make a mistake will correct me. He teaches 
the nebular hypothesis as probably true. And while his 
colleague, Professor Martin, does not believe in evolution, 
he does believe what I believe, that belief in evolution is 
perfectly consistent with belief in the sacred scriptures, 
as he has written to me himself. And so I am told that 
Professor Du Pre^ at Wofford College, teaches it. I know 



50G 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



that in the University of Georgia evolution is taught. I 
know — shall I tell it \ — that the Synods of Xashville and 
Alabama and other synods of the Southwest are teaching 
evolution at the Southwestern Presbyterian University. 
I know that the Synod of Kentucky is teaching evolution 
at the Central University ; and so I might go on ; but this 
surely is enough. Along the whole line of these colleges 
which I have named I have failed to find an exception. 

"Xow as to the belief of naturalists in foreign lands. 
When in feeble health, some twelve years ago, I went 
abroad and spent a portion of my time in the enlightened 
capital of Saxony, where I was warmly received and in- 
vited to become a member of the scientific association of 
that city. I visited the Scientific Association of Switzer- 
land in 1872, and I spent days in conversing with my fel- 
low members upon this very subject. In IS 73, I had the 
pleasure of attending the meeting of the German Natural- 
ists' Association at Wiesbaden, and there too I pursued 
my inquiries. Among others I made the acquaintance of 
one who has been continually named during this discus- 
sion, Professor Virchow, with whom I conversed freely 
touching this very subject. In London, I had the oppor- 
tunity of attending the Geological Society and the Anthro- 
pological Society, and making the acquaintance of the dis- 
tinguished naturalists in those great societies. Xow, 
Moderator, do you want to know what I found \ I did not 
then believe evolution to be true ; I believed it to be not 
true, and I wanted to be upheld and strengthened in my 
opposition ; and I was trying to find all the help I could 
in that direction. So far as the capital of Saxony was 
concerned, the professor of Comparative Anatomy, in 
whose laboratory I was dissecting day after day, did not 
believe in evolution. The professor of Geology, distin- 
guished highly in that kingdom, was in doubt. But every 
other naturalist in that association, so far as I could 
learn, except those two and myself, were decided evolu- 
tionists. At the meeting which I have referred to, at 
Freiburg, in Switzerland, I found no anti-evolutionist 
except one Presbyterian minister, who had paid some at- 
tention to science, and so had become a member of that 
association. At the meeting of the German naturalists 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



507 



at Wiesbaden, the subject having been brought promi- 
nently forward, the greatest interest was felt. Every one 
was ablaze with regard to the matter, and yet though I 
prosecuted my inquiries with great diligence, I could not 
find a single member who agreed with me. From my 
•conversations with Professor Virchow, I feel sure he 
would be greatly amused and amazed if he knew how he 
has been quoted during this controversy as an anti- 
evolutionist. 

"In my enumeration of colleges I should have stated 
that evolution is taught in the University of Xorth Caro- 
lina by young Professor Holmes from Laurens. 

"Since my return home I have continued these in- 
quiries to which I have been referring. During a recent 
visit to Philadelphia, where I met many members of the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science, 
I asked each of them to what extent evolution was re- 
ceived. On being invariably told it was almost univer- 
sally believed, I asked if they knew of any exception 
among leading naturalists in America ; the answer was 
always the same, 'Yes, one, Sir William Dawson, of Mon- 
treal.' During the same visit I met a member of the 
British Association ; and to my stereotyped question I 
received the answer that evolution was accepted as true 
by nearly all British naturalists. In Prance I have been 
able to hear of but one anti-evolutionist who is eminent, 
the distinguished De Quatrefages." 

Dr. Woodrow then read a letter he had recently re- 
-ceived from his former fellow student, Professor William 
H. Brewer, of Yale College, whom he styles a Christian 
gentleman. This eminent scientist had been engaged in 
various geological surveys and other scientific work in 
the field, and was intimately acquainted with many work- 
ing naturalists. This letter was in reply to Dr. Wood- 
row's request for the names of such naturalists who were, 
and of such as were not, evolutionists. The writer says : 

"7 know of but one eminent naturalist in America who does not 
'believe in evolution,' that is, the venerable Sir William Dawson, of 
Canada, who is an illustrious geologist and a good man. 

"When I speak of naturalists, I include all geologists, whether 
-structural or experts in paleontology. . .. „ I have a somewhat 



508 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



wide personal acquaintance with this class in this country, less so in 
Europe. 

"I have an impression that in Europe a few naturalists are still 
left, all old men, who have not accepted the modern doctrine of 
evolution; but who they are and what their present belief is I do 
not know. While I can repeat many names of eminence there who 
believe in evolution, I cannot cite one who does not, although I think 
some still exist. ... I think that the working naturalists of the 
Avorld are as substantially agreed as to the truth of the doctrine of 
evolution as the educated men of the world are as to the rotundity 
of the earth. 

"I am a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Of the 
ninety-four living members (1 have run through the list) I am 
acquainted personally with thirty-two naturalists who believe in 
evolution (I exclude from this all the mathematicians, astronomers, 
physicists, engineers, etc., and all others whose belief I have no 
knowledge of), and I do not know of any member, naturalist or 
otherwise, who denies it : but then I have no positive knowledge 
as to the beliefs of a number of the members. 

"As I look down the first page of the list, I find the naturalists- 
(including geologists) Alexander Agassiz, Spencer F. Baird, W. K. 
Brooks, W. H. Brewer, C. Comstock, E. D. Cope, E. Coues, J. D. 
Dana, C. Dutton, W. G. Farlow, G. K. Gilbert, F. X. Gill. Asa Gray, 
and so on down the list. 

"There is an annual 'Scientific Directory,' or 'Xaturalists' Di- 
rectory,' published at Salem, and some years ago I looked over the 
list as then constituted, and marked the names of all those scientists 
whose religious belief I had any knowledge of, and I was struck with 
the large number who were connected with some evangelical church 
— I, then and still think a larger proportion by far than would 
be found to be the case with a similar list of lawyers or doctors. 

"I have among my scientific acquaintances devout and zealous 
Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopa- 
lians, etc., etc., who believe in evolution, and who are no more dis- 
turbed in their religious faith by this belief than by the belief that 
the earth is round, the sun the centre of the solar system, or the 
world more than six thousand years old. 

"It seems to me that the doctrine of evolution is now as firmly 
and surely established as either of the three doctrines (dogmas, if 
you choose) I have named. Many of my friends will not discuss it 
now, except as they might discuss either of the other three beliefs 
named, and it seems to me most unfortunate that the clergy should 
be the last and most reluctant to accept, even as an intellectual 
belief, a doctrine so firmly placed, and so generally accepted by other 
classes of educated men. 



COXTKOVEKSIES OF SCIEXCE. 



509 



"As a teacher, I see much of young men, and know their diffi- 
culties. Some years ago I had much experience with the rougher 
elements of society when at work on explorations and surveys ; and 
my belief is that this attitude of so many good clergymen against 
scientific progress is a more powerful factor in the turning of the 
masses away from religious teaching, which so many are deploring, 
than all the writings and all the arguments of all the infidels in 
Christendom. 

"You and I are both old enough to have seen its sad effects in the 
discussion of the geological question. That is now settled; the evil 
appears to be renewed in the matter of evolution, with the same sad 
results. 

"He ends with the prayer that this Synod may be kept 
from similar folly. 

"Now, Moderator, I have given yon the evidence on 
this point fully, and as clearly as I could, setting before 
you the sources of my information, even at the risk of do- 
ing that which was immodest. 

"But have we not much evidence on the other side ? 
Have we not heard a great deal of Sir William Thom- 
son's opposition to evolution % And is he not a distin- 
guished scientific man '? And ought not his testimony to 
be decisive ? Undoubtedly he is one of the most eminent 
men of science living. But on a question of natural his- 
tory, is he an expert? The sphere of his greatness lies 
outside of that department of science. He has studied 
mathematics, the molecular constitution of matter, elec- 
tricity and heat, and various other physical subjects ; and 
in these departments of knowledge he is a master. But he 
has not so studied natural history, and there he cannot- 
speak with authority. But let us suppose that he is here a 
competent witness, and let us hear what he said some 
years ago. When he was delivering an address before the 
British Association, he gave it as his opinion that the way 
life originated on this planet was that it was brought 
hither by meteorites wandering through space and falling 
on the earth, and that all present life came from that 
source. Now, as anti-evolutionists have introduced Sir 
William as their witness, they are bound to accept his tes- 
timony. Will not Judge Walsh there tell you that that 
is the rule ? So here we have a person introduced as a 
witness to prove the orthodox belief, maintaining evolu- 



510 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



tion by the most fanciful ideas ever uttered in relation 
to it. Why, Darwin himself was nearer the orthodox be- 
lief than that. He held that God did create immediately 
some things — the first forms of life on the earth : but this 
good Presbyterian elder, Sir William Thomson, tells us 
that he thinks it most probable that the first germs of life 
were brought by these wandering meteorites wildly ca- 
reering through space ! 

"Another anti-evolutionist witness is that prince of 
naturalists, the great Louis Agassiz, my friend and my 
teacher. We are told that he pronounced the theory of 
evolution a scientific blunder ; and surely he knew if any- 
body did. Well, if we must receive his testimony as con- 
clusive on one point in natural history, we must receive 
it as equally trustworthy in all. As believers in the Bible, 
we are much interested in the question of the unity of the 
human race. Ask this master what he believes on that 
point. He replies : 'All the members of the human family 
belong to a single species.' 'Oh !' you will say, 'that is 
all right ; that is just what we believe.' But he would 
stop you before you rejoiced too much. 'Yes,' he adds, 'a 
single species, but that species consists of many varieties ; 
and each of these varieties had entirely different ances- 
tors. There is the red man, the negro, the white man, 
and the Chinaman ; and I know too much about natural 
history to believe that all of these could come from the 
same source. Instead of a single pair being created, as 
you think, there must have been hundreds of negroes 
created at the same time, and hundreds of Chinese, and 
hundreds of white men. There is no such thing as unity 
of origin.' That is what he would tell you. But I am not 
going to accept the testimony of even so eminent a man as 
conclusive against that of the cloud of witnesses I have 
produced before you, when I find him going so far astray 
and teaching what I know to be not true. 

"~NTow are you going to commit the Synod of South Car- 
olina and the whole church to the assertion that evolution 
is an 'unverified hypothesis' on such evidence ? Is that to 
be the belief of a body that has no business to have any 
scientific belief ? If you are going to have a scientific 
belief in this matter, it would be well perhaps to study 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



511 



the subject somewhat longer, lest you meet the fate which 
has befallen every council in every part of the Christian 
church which has ever undertaken to formulate its belief 
with regard to natural science or natural history, from the 
earliest ages clown to the present time. I know that the 
holy office of 1633 has its defenders and upholders upon 
this floor ; but if you can consistently with a proper sense 
of duty, abstain from putting yourselves in the same 
category, surely you will do it. 

"The next allegation in the minority report against my 
hypothesis," said Dr. Woodrow, "is that it is contrary to 
the interpretation of the scriptures by our church and to 
her prevailing and recognized views." He had read 
from the Confession and the Larger Catechism, he said, 
all that they contain on the subject of the creation of man. 
"Do those standards contain anything about the mode of 
man's creation, that is, as to whether it was mediate or 
immediate ? But this minority report does not lean solely 
on our standards, but refers us to the church's prevalent 
views. Where are these to be found ? I suppose we must 
go to prominent Christian men and ministers. Twenty- 
five years ago, had I wanted to know the prevailing views 
of the church about geology, I would have gone to the Rev. 
Dr. Talmage, the honored president of a university in 
Georgia. He held the view, that the world was only six 
thousand years old, and that the scriptures so taught. 
That was the church's prevailing view then. When I 
came to Columbia, I found that the loved Thornwell held 
the same view, and so did his successor. A few years ago, 
I know that the three senior professors at Union Theolog- 
ical Seminary believed just as Dr. Talmage did. Those 
were the prevailing and recognized views of our church 
twenty-five years ago. But because these good and 
learned men believed thus and I did not, was I disbeliev- 
ing the truth of the scriptures ? Their judgment, great, 
good and learned as they were and are, could not affect the 
opinion of any one who looked into the subject for him- 
self." 

Dr. Woodrow having spoken a long time, and being 
evidently fatigued, a motion of adjournment was made, 
when he remarked that he "was in the hands of Synod." 



512 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



Then he added that as home duties were probably calling 
for some to retire, he requested such to retire now. A 
few did so ; and then expressing his thanks for the little 
rest given him, Dr. Woodrow continued: "I know that 
it is generally supposed that if one believes in evolution 
in one sense that he must believe it in every sense. No 
argument, I think, is necessary to prove that that is not 
the case. Is it true that what Haeckel believes as to evolu- 
tion I must likewise believe \ Must I believe what Her- 
bert Spencer and Darwin believe because I have declared 
that I regard something else as probably true ? So you 
have been told on this floor ; and has it not been proved 
by quotations from the Southwestern Presbyterian to show 
that whatever Darwin believes, I also believe ? You have 
heard seven reasons given, drawn from that source, to 
prove this assertion, although I have kept saying, 'I 
don't/ 'I don't/ and I say so still, the seven reasons of the 
Southwestern Presbyterian to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing. I ask you if it is fair or right to attribute to me views 
that I utterly disclaim % I do not say that this is done 
through either inability to understand or a desire to mis- 
interpret ; but I ask if it is fair or just that I should be 
held responsible for views that I absolutely abhor, and 
which I have proved over and over again that I do not 
hold. Moderator, knowing that I had so explicitly re- 
pudiated all atheistic forms of evolution, I could not but 
spring to my feet when I heard, two or three days ago, 
for the first time, that which I had denounced as atheism 
attributed to me. If I erred in so vehemently repelling 
the charge, I crave your forgiveness. 

"Permit me to say that much of the difficulty on this 
subject arises from the failure to perceive that evolution 
and scripture do not stand in opposition to each other, 
when both are correctly understood. There is a similar 
want of clear perception when it is said that creation and 
evolution are mutually exclusive, are contradictory ; cre- 
ation meaning the immediate calling, by divine power, 
of something into existence out of non-existence ; evolu- 
tion meaning derivation from previous forms or states by 
inherent, self-originated or eternal laws, independent of 
a]l connection with divine personal power. Hence, if this 



CONTROVEKSIES OF SCIENCE. 



513 



is correct, those who believe in creation are theists ; those 
who believe in evolution are atheists. But there is no 
propriety in thus mingling in the definition two things 
which are so completely different as the power that pro- 
duces an effect, and the mode in which the effect is pro- 
duced. 

''Let me illustrate ; take an oak for instance. First, 
observe the acorn. You notice that under the influence 
of heat and moisture it begins to swell. Then little leaves 
make their appearance ; then these leaves are repeated 
and repeated until at last the full-grown oak stands before 
you. [Now let us inquire what is the religious character 
of this description of the acorn's being developed into an 
oak. Do I need to show that in describing this process 
the idea of God as its author was not of necessity in- 
troduced ? In describing the changes from the acorn to 
the oak I am stating merely the results of observation. I 
am not then considering the power that has produced the 
-changes. The mere observation of the process or mode by 
which the acorn becomes an oak does not necessarily tell 
me whether it is God who is the cause of the change 
or not. So the observation of cases in which I observe 
modification during descent does not necessarily tell me 
anything of the power producing the observed changes. 
Within the limits of natural science, it is only the natural 
or the ordinary, that which occurs uniformly, that can 
rightly be considered. All else the student of natural 
science would regard as extraordinary or extra-natural, 
and so beyond his province. If he should speak of the 
supernatural, he would be going beyond his province. So 
the idea of God is always present with the theistic evolu- 
tionist, though he may not express it, while the atheistic 
evolutionist absolutely denies it. 

''Speaking of the processes or modes, it is true that a 
knowledge of them depends on observation, which teaches 
us nothing of their origin ; but so soon as I have learned 
from other sources that there is a God; that there is a 
being, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in wisdom, 
power, and all his attributes ; and when I know the rela- 
tions of this being to the universe, his workmanship, then 
I perceive that this process of change from acorn to oak is 



514 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



his mode of working — that every step in the process is the 
working of an almighty and all-wise God. And so wdien 
I come as a believer in God to the study of those things 
which I now begin to call the works of God, I find him 
present in a way that I had never imagined before. When 
I look at the quivering leaf growing under the influences 
of the sunshine and the rain, I see before me God's power 
effecting the wonderful changes that are there taking 
place ; I see the present power of that God directing and 
guiding its faintest movement. When I see the dew-drop 
resting on the blade of grass, reflecting from its surface 
the prismatic hues, I see not proofs of the existence of a 
distant or absent God ; I see his hand there immediately 
present, holding the particles together for my delight as 
one of his ends, causing the white ray of light to be 
broken up into the marvellous rainbow colors so as to 
charm the sense of sight ; it is God who is doing this be- 
fore me. As I look abroad upon the operations of nature 
on a grander scale — when I stand in the presence of t he- 
mountain and behold the veil of blinding snow on its 
summit, I see there the power of God holding particle to 
particle and producing that which fills my mind with 
awe ; that which expands my soul and gives me a new 
and an exalted idea of the mighty Creator — not in whom 
we did live, but in whom we now live, and in whom we 
have our being, who is now causing every pulse beat in 
this wrist, who is now giving me the power to be heard 
by you. He is a God near at hand ; he is not a God afar 
off. This, I say, is the Christian's view of God and his 
relation to his works. Can you imagine, then, if this is 
true and not a mere fancy, can you imagine that when I,, 
so believing, speak of evolution, or when any right-think- 
ing man speaks of it, he is pushing God away and doing 
that which tends to materialism, or to a blank denial of 
the existence of the Almighty ? Xeed I now undertake 
further to prove that evolution is not antagonistic to cre- 
ation ; that evolution is creation ? 

"If anything more is needed, let me ask you again the 
question which I have heard so frequently during the 
last day or two, 'Who made you V I do not mean, who 
made, several ages ago, those from whom you have de- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



515- 



scended, but, who made you ? Are you an orphan so far 
as the Creator of the universe is concerned, or is God your 
Father and Creator ? Are you going to allow some one to 
come here and say that because he did not create you im- 
mediately, he did not create you at all ? No ; you have 
as much claim to him as your Father as Adam had. But 
did he make you immediately ? Oh ! no, he did not. Yet, 
for all this, no one is willing to give up his right to say, 
'Our Father' and 'our Creator. 7 Creation is not antago- 
nistic to our evolution. God may create out of nothing ; 
but so far as the daily operations of his hands are con- 
cerned, we see that he does not create out of nothing, but 
out of something that he had previously brought out of 
nothing. But he is not the less creating before our eyes. 
There is no antagonism between creation and that mode- 
of creation which we call evolution. 

"You will now better understand why I should say that 
I want no change in the expression of the Confession, 
'After God had made all other creatures, he created man.' 
The only difference between us is as to the probable mode 
of that creation. 

"I wish in the next place to call attention to the fact 
that it has been constantly reiterated that I subordinated 
scripture to science. The only answer that I have for that 
statement is that it is not true., I cannot give any explan- 
ation of the matter except just that. I say that there is 
not a word that I ever spoke, or wrote, or thought, that 
would bear that construction ; and any one who has read 
what I have written ought to know that it is not true. I 
have always sought to know what the scriptures teach 
with regard to any matter that I was examining; and 
when I have found the meaning of the scriptures, I have 
accepted that as final. I say again that there is not a 
syllable I ever uttered, or a word I ever spoke, that could 
even remotely sanction any such construction. When I 
said that I believed it to be probably true that Adam's 
body was included in the method of mediate creation, it 
was only after I had shown that it might not be incon- 
sistent with the sacred scriptures. [Here a motion was 
made that the Synod adjourn. Lost by a large majority.] 

"Hastening on as rapidly as I can, and omitting many 



516 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



things, I will take up a sample of the objections that have 
been made to my views. 'You are utterly unscientific/ I 
am told, 'in your statement that Adam, as to his body, was 
derived from beast ancestors.' That is about the way it is 
put. I do not think that all who use this language mean 
thereby to excite disgust or contempt towards me. But 
when I say that Adam, as to his body, may have been a 
lineal descendant of the higher forms of mammalian life, 
I believe it because I think it in accord with God's usual 
plan as I find it in the case of other animals. 'When you 
come to the soul of Adam, you are guilty of a breach of 
continuity; and when you come to Eve, instead of be- 
lieving that she descended from the lower animals, you 
say that she was created in a supernatural way. There- 
fore, you are talking nonsense ; you contradict yourself ; 
you are doing that which is unscientific ; you are making 
a muddle and a jumble. Is it not perfectly clear that 
God made man, male and female, and that he created 
them in the same way ? You say there are two ways.' 

"Why do I say so ? I say part of what I do because 
God tells me so piainly in his word ; I say the other part 
because, his word being silent, he has allowed me to learn 
its probable truth from a study of his works. I do not be- 
lieve it unscientific to believe in miracles, or that the Al- 
mighty God, who chooses to effect certain purposes in 
one way now, ties himself to that way, and that he can 
never effect the same purpose in another way. I do not 
think it unscientific to believe that God can make wine 
by causing the grapes to grow on the vine, and the juice 
to be expressed and to ferment, and at the same time to 
believe that he can also make it even better without that 
which is his ordinary process. If that is making a mud- 
dle and a jumble, I am satisfied to make it. It may be 
making a botch and doing what is very ridiculous to say 
that while fire ordinarily burns, it does not always burn. 
I remember a case where fire did not burn. Don't you ? 
Is that unscientific ? If it is, I am content to be un- 
scientific. Why do J say that there are two different 
ways as to the creation of the bodies of Adam and Eve ? 
Because I find in the Bible no expression which cer- 
tainly shows the mode of the creation of Adam's body, 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



517 



and I do find the mode of the creation of Eve's body and 
soul clearly set forth. It is not the ordinary way, and 
therefore it is excluded from evolution. Is that a sub- 
ordination of the scriptures to science to accept their 
plain and simple declaration ? Again they say, 'If true 
science admits of no change or exception, how can you 
believe that God made the first man ? If he made our 
parents in a certain way and their parents in the same 
way for all time, we will have to keep going back forever 
before we arrive at the origin.' With regard to that mat- 
ter I might reply that such an objection might come 
from a certain kind of so-called science, but I do not see 
how it can come from a Christian believer. The same 
objection, if valid, would keep one who believes in the 
possibility of miracles from believing in any branch of 
natural science. 

"But I wish to say that what is involved in my prob- 
able belief as to the creation of Adam, has been the belief 
of the church of Christ from the earliest ages down to the 
present time as to the creation of each human being. 
What has been the doctrine of the Reformed churches, 
with but few exceptions, until very recent times ? What 
was the prevalent belief in the church before the Refor- 
mation ? It is that doctrine which is spoken of as 'cre- 
ationism.' That doctrine represents the body of each 
human being as derived from its parents by natural gen- 
eration — as mediately created ; while each soul is im- 
mediately created, and is imparted to the derived animal 
body by God's direct power. By one mode or process the 
animal body is brought into existence, then by an entirely 
different process the soul is brought into existence and 
united with the previously formed animal body. This is 
not, I understand, the doctrine of the professor of The- 
ology in the Columbia Seminary; but if you will read 
any work on theology or church history, you will see 
that it has always been the widely prevalent belief of the 
church. And you cannot fail to perceive that this fur- 
nishes an exact counterpart of the suggestion that Adam's 
body may have been derived from ancestors, while his soul 
was immediately created and inbreathed by God. 

"I might also call your attention to the wonderful like- 



.518 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



ness that exists between the first Adam and the second 
Adam. That is to say, in the origin of the one and of 
the other there has been a mixture of the natural and the 
.supernatural, of creation mediate and immediate. How 
was it in the incarnation of our adorable Redeemer He 
was formed as to his body of the substance of his mother. 
He grew according to the laws of God as in the case of 
any other human being. And then, whatever may be true 
as to the doctrine of creationism, we know that in his ca^e 
there was superadded that other nature, the nature of the 
Almighty God. There was plainly that admixture of the 
natural and the supernatural which is presumed in the 
hypothesis which I have been inclined to believe as prob- 
ably true, and which has been held up as only worthy of 
withering scorn. 

"Moderator, I am told that in the contest now in 
progress I stand alone ; that no one stands beside me. or 
believes with me. Xow, if there is anything for which 
I yearn, after the love of God and of Jesus Christ my 
Saviour, it is the love and approbation of the good, the 
pure, the upright, of those who bear the image of God in 
their hearts. And I know that isolation is desolation. 
But if I must stand alone in defence of what I believe to 
be his truth, I submit to the decree and to the will of my 
God. I will not be the first who has seemed to stand 
alone. As I look through the vistas opened before me by 
the word of God, I see the forms of three who were cast 
alone into the furnace of fire, heated seven times more 
than it was wont to be heated. But as I look again, they 
are not alone, for four are walking in the midst of the 
fire ; and when they came forth from that furnace, not 
even the smell of fire had passed on them. I remember 
also that when an apostle was once called to stand before 
Xero, all men forsook him : but yet he was not alone. 
As I look in another direction. I see a form standing 
alone, in the presence of a mighty emperor and the princes 
of the empire, and saying, all alone as he seemed to be. 
"With regard to the charges against me. if any man can 
prove that they are true by the word of God, I will repent 
and recant ; but until then, here I stand : I cannot other- 
wise ; God help me. Amen.' And so stand I. 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



519 



a In the next place, we are told that evolution is to be 
rejected because it is born of atheism. It is said that 
many atheists hold the doctrine of evolution, and there- 
fore it is not true. Darwin was not an atheist, but at the 
same time he was not a believer in Christianity. But how 
does that affect the truth of evolution ? On the other 
hand, we know that there are many others who believe in 
evolution who are not atheists. If others say it leads to 
atheism, I say it does not ; and I content myself with 
pronouncing their proposition an 'unverified hypothesis.' 

"Then you are told that it assigns a beastly origin to 
man. Well, we need not be so proud. We have bodies 
exactly like the beasts, if you choose to call them so. Our 
muscles are arranged in the same way. The heart beats 
in the dog just as it beats in me. His legs are made like 
mine and like my arms. He has a brain in his skull and 
a spinal marrow. He digests as I do. He does every- 
thing in the same way. Again, as to our instincts being 
shocked, what is there in red clay that is so much more 
noble than the most highly organized form God had made 
up to the time of Adam ? You have only the choice be- 
tween red clay and the highest and best thing that was 
produced by the power of God up to the time of man's 
existence. And if your decision is to be controlled by 
your prejudices and your instincts and your feelings, let 
me ask you, Moderator, how do you like to think that the 
negro is your brother % Is your instinct shocked by that ? 
Will you follow instincts in one case and not follow them 
in another ? 

"AVithout dwelling longer on that point, let me call 
your attention to an objection urged against the theory as 
to man's body. We are told that, according to the re- 
ceived interpretation of the scriptures, he was made of 
inorganic dust. (Of course, when I say that man's body 
may have been made of organic dust, I mean God may 
have chosen to derive man's body from a previously ex- 
isting animal form.) You are told that the idea of 
mediate creation is precluded by the received interpreta- 
tion of the Bible, Well, it is not precluded by anything 
said in our Confession of Faith and Catechisms, as we 
have already seen. Outside our standards, I suppose that 



520 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



some of the most widely 'prevailing and recognized view-' 
of the meaning of the scriptures are set forth in the little 
Catechism, already frequently quoted during this dis- 
cussion. What is said there on this subject I Let us see. 
'Who made you V 'God.' Did he make you mediately 
or immediately ? I suppose you would say, God did not 
make me immediately, but mediately, through my an- 
cestors. 'Of what did he make you V 'Of the dust of 
the ground.' Mediately or immediately ? Xow, if you 
say it was mediate in the one case, why may you not at 
least say it may have been mediate in the other \ In Ec- 
clesiastes xii. 7, we learn that each one of us is made of 
the dust of the earth; and yet each one of us has come 
from a long line of ancestors. But that language is figur- 
ative, you say; and it is true, as has been said on this 
floor, that every figure must have its literal basis. Xow, 
you say that the basis for the figure is to be found in the 
fact that Adam's body was formed of the literal dust of 
the ground. How do you know that ( Suppose I say you 
may go back a generation or so farther for the basis of 
the figure, why not ? According to your own exegesis, you 
can go back from yourself to Adam. Why can't you go 
back a step farther and farther, until you reach the very 
beginning of all organic life, when inorganic matter was 
organized and vivified \ If you may go back to Adam for 
the basis of your figure, what right have you to say that I 
must stop there, and may not go still farther in search of 
the true basis ? What right have you to say that I shall 
stop at any particular place l n 

At this point, another motion was made to adjourn, 
which, a division being had, was lost. 

"Xext, let me call your attention to the formidable ob- 
jection urged by Mr. Pratt, derived from the genealogy 
of the Saviour as it is presented in the third chapter of 
the gospel according to St. Luke : 'Which was the son of 
ATethusaleh, which was the son of Enoch. ... which 
was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.' Xow, let 
us read that genealogy in accordance with the interpreta- 
tion which AEr. Pratt has insisted on, and wouldn't it be : 
'Which was the son of Adam, which was the son of — ' 
what ? Of what shall I say ? Go back to the Catechism, 



CONTROVERSIES OE SCIENCE. 



521 



what is the substance of which Adam was made ? If it 
is true that a belief that Adam's body may have been de- 
rived from previously existing animal forms requires you 
to read, as you have been told, 'Which was the son of 
Adam, which was the son of a beast,' is it not equally true 
that Mr. Pratt's belief requires you to read, 'Which was 
the son of red clay V Is that the way in which you would 
reason I Well, it is not the way, Moderator, in which I 
would reason. You know, and it would seem that every- 
body must know, that this genealogy cannot have the 
remotest bearing on the question as to how it pleased God 
to form the body of Adam. Would Adam be less the son 
of God if God formed him of one substance rather than 
another ? Our venerable friend [Dr. Frierson] tells us 
that we are not certain about the meaning of anything 
contained in the Bible. Still I am persuaded that my 
friend and I would agree as to the meaning of this geneal- 
ogy, that going back step by step we at length, come to the 
first great Cause, the God and Father of us all, the om- 
nipresent and almighty God, the source of all being ; the 
framer of Adam's body and the Father of his spirit ; and, 
through him, of all his descendants to the latest genera- 
tion."" 

At 12 :15 o'clock Dr. Woodrow, having been speaking 
steadily and holding the close attention of his audience 
since 7:30 o'clock, closed, and announced that he was 
exhausted, and could not resume until morning. A mo- 
tion was made to adjourn, which was carried, Dr. Wood- 
row having the floor. 

Xext evening (the morning having been devoted to re- 
plies to his remarks), Dr. Woodrow resuming the argu- 
ment, said: "Moderator, you need not be at all alarmed 
at this formidable array of books, for I do not intend to 
read them to you. I had intended to read extracts from 
them on certain points ; for example, from this work by 
President Schmid, to show who are evolutionists ; but I 
think probably it is not necessary. I had also intended to 
read an extract or two from this work on The Origin of 
the World, by the anti-evolutionist, Principal Dawson, to 
show that in some important particulars the views of the 
author correspond precisely with those set forth in my 



522 



MY LIFE AXD TIDIES 



address. I had intended to read from Guyot's book on 
Creation, to show that his teachings upon points touching 
the scriptures are identical with mine ; and that while I 
do not know what his views were with regard to evolution, 
yet that is a matter of entire indifference, for he has dis- 
tinctly set forth in the work that the question, so far as 
evolution is concerned (within the limits of my defini- 
tion), is an entirely open one. I had intended to read 
from Truths and Untruths of Evolution, by the Rev. Dr. 
Drury, lecturer before the Theological Seminary of the 
Dutch Reformed Church, for the purpose of showing the 
strong support the theory received from those high in 
that church ; and particularly from the teachings of one 
of his predecessors in the lectureship, the learned Tayler 
Lewis, who, notwithstanding the fact that he was an 
avowed anti-evolutionist, maintained that it was perfectly 
consistent with the scriptures to entertain the views of 
the theory which I do, and of evolution in all the various 
directions which I point out. But I shall not burden you 
with all this. Xor shall I read to you a letter which I 
have in my pocket from the professor of Theology in the 
Allegheny Theological Seminary [Rev. Dr. S. H. Kel- 
logg], in which he makes it appear that in all the scrip- 
tural points involved his views are identical in every par- 
ticular with mine. I may say, however, while on this 
point, with regard to the chairs of theology, that evolu- 
tion is discussed by every professor of theology in the 
Presbyterian Church, whether Xorth or South ; and there 
is a good deal about it in the text-book used by the profes- 
sor of Theology in the Columbia Theological Seminary. 
I am not singular, therefore, you will observe. Moderator, 
in my course." 

"It has been charged that my principle of interpreta- 
tion makes out of the scripture a nose of wax.' 7 He read 
from the Confession the principles of interpretation he 
had taught. "All things in scripture are not plain to all, 
but whatever concerns the plan of salvation is so plain and 
clear that all can know it. The infallible rule for the in- 
terpretation of scripture is scripture itself. I have never 
taught anything else. The inference of the minority re- 
port is not only that there is a higher and better sense of 



CONTROVERSIES OE SCIENCE. 



523 



scripture than that contained in the standards, but that 
when there is in the standards that which a teacher or 
preacher does not believe, he is still bound to preach and 
teach it!" 

Dr. TToodrow proceeded: "I am charged with a distinct 
offence. I could have been and should have been tried be- 
fore the presbytery or Board of Directors. I therefore 
challenge all who believe that I have been guilty of teach- 
ing matters contrary to scripture to table charges against 
me before some tribunal that has the paver and the right 
to try me. I demand that they do so, or I demand if they 
do not do it, that no mouth shall be opened against me in 
respect of this matter, at the risk of being recreant to a 
sacred trust. [Low murmur of "Good.''] If any have 
reasons to believe that I have done any evil, I am ready 
to answer before any competent tribunal. It may seem 
a light thing to some to be heralded over the world as an 
infidel, to be charged almost with having committed the 
unpardonable sin, so that doubt is expressed whether it 
is right to pray for him. But I do not believe Synod will 
countenance any such view, persecute me, lynch me, with- 
out a trial." 

Dr. TToodrow referred to the commendation of the 
course of the church toward Galileo. "It has been argued 
that the church was not responsible for the persecution 
of Galileo, that science did it. It was indeed science, but 
science in the church, where it has no business to be, 
working through ecclesiastics. It has been further argued 
that, as Galileo was employed by the church, it had a 
right to prevent his teaching doctrines contrary to her 
oeliefs and her faith. As a matter of fact Galileo was not 
at any time under the control of the church. He was 
professor in the University of Pisa, and only under the 
control of the church to the extent that the church then 
claimed to control everything. The church had its scien- 
tific theory, and it was because of that that the church 
committed such fearful error. 

"There is one thing, ^Moderator, which has been used 
during the discussion to which it is scarcely worth while 
to allude ; but as no little stress was laid on it in the way 
of appealing to the feelings, perhaps I should say just a 



524 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



few words about it. You were told that the science of 
evolution, and all those bad things that were said about it, 
were not fit to be taught in a theological seminary, because 
they would be of no practical use to a minister when he 
was called to the bedside of a dying saint or a dying sin- 
ner. You were asked what comfort or what guidance the 
dying man would receive from a discussion of the origin 
of man's body, or any unproved hypothesis connected with 
the subject. Is this a proper test of what shall be taught 
in a theological seminary { Then you must put a stop to 
Professor Hemphill's teachings; for what comfort or 
guidance will a dying man derive from listening to the 
conjugation of a Hebrew verb at his bedside ? And so 
with a large part of the auxiliary instructions in every 
seminary course. But I beg pardon, Moderator, for tak- 
ing up your time with this ; I have alluded to it only to 
ask you to think what such an argument is worth. 

"I have already intimated that in my opinion evolu- 
tion, its truth or falsity, is a matter of extremely small 
importance. I think that, as regards your Christian char- 
acter, it does not make the slightest difference whether 
you believe in evolution cr not. I have said directly and 
by implication over and over again that the church may 
not teach science, even what would be admitted by all to 
be true science, so far as such teaching would imply that 
that science is sanctioned by the church. It makes no dif- 
ference, as to the doctrines of the Christian church, 
whether one believes the Ptolemaic doctrine of the solar 
system, or whether he believes the earth to be round or 
flat, or, as I think, whether he regards evolution to be 
probably true or an unverified hypothesis. Scientific be- 
liefs, even those which are in some respects of the highest 
consequence, when they are compared with the doctrines 
with which the church of God is concerned, and which 
alone it is commissioned to teach, are of utter insignifi- 
cance. 

"It is for you now to keep the church from being again 
dragged down from its sublime and sacred work, as it 
has so often been in the past. The church in various 
ways has uttered its belief on one scientific question after 
another during the past ; and I think I am right when 



C0XTK0VEKS1ES OF SCIENCE. 



525 



I assert that every time the church has undertaken to ex- 
press an opinion on scientific matters, it has expressed an 
opinion that was wrong. And what, Moderator, is the 
sad result \ In every land where knowledge prevails, just 
in proportion frequently to the extent of the knowledge is 
the extent of the rejection of the holy scriptures. How 
could it well be otherwise ?" 

"Moderator and brethren, you now have one of the 
grandest opportunities that could be presented of main- 
taining the pure spirituality and exclusive scriptural 
•character of the church. 

"I beseech you that you abstain from speaking as rulers 
in the church of Christ that which the Head of the church 
has not authorized you in his word to speak. I beseech 
you that you will not place deadly stumbling blocks in the 
path of those who are seeking the way of life in the holy 
word. For the sake of the intelligent ingenuous youth 
.of the land, for the sake of the greater multitudes who 
will look to them as their guides, that you may not drive 
to eternal death those whom you would fain win to eternal 
blessedness, I beseech you that you will not tell them in 
Christ's name that if they accept the teachings of God's 
works, they can have no share in the unspeakable blessings 
offered in God's word. By your love for the souls of your 
fellowmen, by your loyalty to the King and Lord of the 
church and your desire to obey him by keeping within the 
limits which he has prescribed to you, as you would 
glorify him by bringing souls into his kingdom, I beseech 
you as his representatives do not commit him to what he 
has not commanded, but preach the word and the word 
alone." 

Eesult. 

The vote was then taken on the adoption of the ma- 
jority report, which was lost by a vote of fifty-two to forty- 
four. The minority report was then taken up and lost 
loj a vote of fifty-two to forty-four. 

Synod then took a recess till eight o'clock. On reas- 
sembling, Rev. J. L. Stevens presented the following : 

Inasmuch as Dr. YVoodrow maintains that he does not teach the 
evolution hypothesis, as set forth by him in his address, in the sense 



526 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



of inculcating it, and as he does not set it forth as a demonstrated 
truth — 

Resolved, By this Synod, that, with this limitation as set forth 
by him, they do not see that he transcends the duties of his chair. 

Rev. W. T. Thompson, D. D., offered the following as a 
substitute : 

Resolved, That in the judgment of this Synod the teaching of evo- 
lution in the Theological Seminary at Columbia, except in a purely 
expository manner, with no intention of inculcating its truth, is 
hereby disapproved. 

This substitute was adopted by a vote of fifty to forty- 
five. 

Rev. Dr. Junkin then offered the following paper, 
which was unanimously adopted : 

In connection with the action taken in regard to the Columbia 
Seminary, the Synod deems it proper to adopt, which is hereby done, 
the following resolution : 

Resolved, That the Synod of South Carolina hereby expresses its 
sincere affection for Dr. Woodrow personally, its appreciation of 
the purity of his Christian character, its admiration of his distin- 
guished talents and of his scholarly attainments, both in theology 
and science, and its high estimate of his past services. 

The result is a complete victory for Dr. Woodrow and 
the Board of Directors, inasmuch as the Synod disap- 
proves what he never had the remotest idea of doing, and 
authorizes his teaching in "a purely expository manner" 
— the only way in which he ever has taught science in the 
Seminary, viz., expounding it and showing its connection 
with revelation. 

Peoceedixgs of the Syxod of Geobgia. 

This body met at Marietta, G-a., October 29th. There 
were present forty-seven ministers and forty-six ruling 
elders. The subject of evolution was taken up the next 
day and referred to a committee of eleven. Majority and 
minority reports were brought in as follows : 

The Rev. Dr. Strickler submitted for the majority the 
following resolutions : 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



527 



1. The action of the Board of Directors of Columbia Theological 
Seminary in permitting the teaching of evolution as contained in 
Dr. Woodrow's address be disapproved. 

2. The Synod is entirely unwilling that this theory should be 
taught in that Seminary, and hereby, as one of the controlling 
Synods of that Seminary, directs the board to take whatever steps 
may be necessary to prevent it. 

The minority report, submitted by Hon. Clifford An- 
derson, was as follows : 

Resolved, 1. That, inasmuch as the hypothesis of evolution con- 
cerning the earth, the lower animals and the body of man, as ad- 
vanced by the professor of Natural Science in connection with Keve- 
lation, is a purely scientific and extra-scriptural hypothesis, the 
church, as such, is not called upon to make any deliverance con- 
cerning its truth or falsity. 

2. That, in view of the deep interest in this matter experienced by 
all, and the fears experienced by some lest this doctrine of evolution 
should become an article of church faith, the Synod deems it ex- 
pedient to say that the church, being set for the defence of the 
gospel and the promulgation of scriptural doctrines, can never 
without transcending her proper sphere incorporate into our Con- 
fession of Faith any of the hypotheses, theories or systems of hu- 
man science. 

3. That, while the presentation of the hypothesis of evolution in 
relation to Scripture falls necessarily within the scope of the duties 
pertaining to the Perkins Professorship, nevertheless neither this 
nor any other scientific hypothesis, is, or can be, taught in our The- 
ological Seminary as an article of church faith. But we see no 
objection to its being demonstrated, as it has been done by Professor 
Woodrow, that the hypothesis of evolution as defined by him is not 
contradictory of the teachings of the word of God. 

4. That, in view of the above considerations, the Synod sees no 
sufficient reason to interfere with the present order of our Theo- 
logical Seminary as determined by the Board of Directors. 

I give the debate as reported in the Atlanta Constitu- 
tion paper, beings however, obliged to omit some of the 
speeches, and to shorten them all. Dr. Boggs's speech ap- 
pears as revised by himself, and I specially omit nearly 
all that Dr. Woodrow said, because he was so fully re- 
ported in the Greenville debate. 

Dr. Strickler, replying to Dr. Woodrow, said this was 
the first time he had ever engaged in the discussions of a 



528 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



synod. "Dr. Woodrow has presented us a great array of 
scientists who believe in evolution. But these scientists 
cannot find the point where one species passes out of an- 
other. Xot only must they find that point, but also where 
one genus is evolved out of another. How far must we 
follow the scientists in this matter ? We cannot follow 
most of them far, or we will drift into atheism. It is time 
for us to cry a halt when we find this theory infringing on 
the declaration of God's word. I think Dr. Woodrow has 
reached that point in his teaching on this question. This 
doctrine brings odium on our religion. The idea of evo- 
lution is horrible to thousands of people, just as you, sir, 
say it was once horrible to you. Dr. Woodrow refers to 
the animal food that we eat, and draws from that an 
analogy which I do not think will hold good. It is not the 
thought of brute matter in our bodies. We all know that 
to be true. But we shrink from the thought that we 
evolved from the brute and retained the brute nature. 
This theory is unchristian. It had its birth in enmity to 
Christianity. It was fostered and formulated by such 
men as Darwin and Huxley, enemies to our faith. Its 
advocates use it to prove the non-existence of God. They 
go back through the long stages of evolution until they 
come to the one atom from which the modern evolutionist 
declares he could evolve a world. When they get to that 
one little atom they come to the conclusion that there is 
no use of a God just to do so little as that. If you believe 
that, we had better put upon the banner of our faith an 
animal, and that animal an ape. You had better write 
the obituary of the church. If you teach, this doctrine, 
you cripple me and every one of us who tries to preach 
the word of God." 

Dr. Strickler added : "Even if we could prove this 
theory, we ought to steer clear of it when the teaching of 
it would do so much injury." He then referred to the 
condemnation of evolution by the Synods of Memphis, 
Tennessee, and Kentucky. "And what did the Synod of 
South Carolina do ? I am at liberty," he said, "to read 
a telegram which has been received here." He then read 
one from Dr. Girardeau, stating that the action of the 
South Carolina Synod was not a compromise, but "dis- 



CONTROVERSIES OE SCIENCE. 



529 



tinctly and intentionally anti-Wbodrow. " "How far is 
Dr. Woodrow going in the direction of evolution. At 
first he thought the theory absolutely false. He then 
thought it only false. Gradually it grew upon him, until 
he now believes it probably true. He is on the march; 
where will he stop ? He has made pretty rapid progress, 
and is still on the march. But the minority report says 
evolution can never go into our creed. Suppose it cannot, 
what difference does it make if it goes into the heads of 
our preachers and is taught ? Venerable men have said to 
me that if we declare this theory consistent with our faith, 
we will unsettle them. The style of interpretation which 
makes the word of God to harmonize with this theory is a 
dangerous method of exegesis." 

Dr. Strickler continued: "The Perkins professorship 
was established to evince the harmony between science 
and religion. But Dr. Woodrow says that is an unattain- 
able end. Do you suppose Judge Perkins ever would 
have made this princely gift if he had supposed it would 
have been used to upset our cherished belief, derived from 
a reading of the scriptures in their purity ? We are 
bound to respect the object for which this bequest was 
made. It will not do to say that if Judge Perkins were 
alive and up with modern science, he would not object to 
such a use of his money. We take a will into the courts 
and sacredly observe its provisions ; and here we are 
confronted with the question whether we are not only 
failing to use this money for the purpose intended by the 
donor, but whether we have not really turned the bequest 
to the use of disproving just what it was intended to 
prove." 

Rev. Dr. W. E. Boggs, professor of Church History 
and Polity in the Columbia Seminary, took the floor, 
saying in substance : "The Synod has been listening to a 
very earnest speech from his honored brother, Dr. Strick- 
ler. It was evident that the Doctor's intention is good. 
His faith in his opinions is very strong. But his logic 
is very weak, in that it substitutes the vehement reasser- 
tion of mere human opinions as to the meaning of the 
Bible, whereas the accuracy of those very uninspired 
opinions is the matter under discussion. Some of these 



530 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



human opinions as to the meaning of texts are very re- 
spectable. But they are also quite ancient, being formed 
by good and true men before the new light about God's 
works had been vouchsafed to mankind. Xow, therefore, 
to reassert those venerable opinions is to beg the question. 
Our only safe plan is to re-examine God's infallible word 
calmly, dispassionately, with any new light now given us. 
JSTot to do so is like Luther's discussion with Zwingli, 
when he kept writing on the table, 'Hoc est corpus me am : 
Hoc est corpus meum/ whereas the meaning of those same 
words was the matter under discussion." 

The speaker then alluded to Dr. Woodrow's devotion 
to the church ; to his faithful and eminent services ; to 
his Scottish ancestors who had not refused their blood in 
the defence of Christ's crown and covenant. 

Speaking of the telegram from Dr. Girardeau, which 
asserted that the recent action by the South Carolina 
Synod was "distinctly anti-Woodrow," he wished to say 
that while entertaining profound regard for his absent 
colleague, he felt free to form his own opinions as to that 
action, and to do so in view of all the facts in the case. 
Dr. Girardeau undoubtedly believed the action to be 
"anti-Woodrow," but what are the facts ? The majority 
report to the synod, heartily endorsing Dr. Woodrow's 
methods of dealing with evolution, was rejected by a vote 
of forty-four yeas to fifty-two nays ; but the minority 
report, which disapproved of his teaching, had also been 
rejected by the same vote exactly — forty-four to fifty-two. 
Then a paper was introduced, prescribing the manner in 
which synod wished Dr. Woodrow to handle evolution. 
"If the facts do not show mutual concessions and an hon- 
orable compromise, I am wholly in error. But these are 
the facts. Let them speak. 

"Dr. Strickler asks, How far are we to follow Darwin ?' 
Surely all of us understand that it is possible to agree with 
Darwin in some of his scientific teachings, while reject- 
ing and abhorring his religious opinions. Surely we see 
that a Christian might consider evolution to indicate 
God's way of diversifying the types of animals and plants 
on the earth. That is to say, such a Christian scientist 
might believe that God occasionally employs natural birth 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



531 



to introduce a new form of life, Darwin's science is one 
matter, and his religions beliefs or disbeliefs are another. 
Aristotle was a heathen, yet Dr. Strickler does not scru- 
ple to use Aristotle's rules of logic in the preparation of 
his excellent sermons. All the world is supposed to know 
that Darwin was descended from an unbelieving family. 
The evidence shows that he was an unbeliever long before 
he discovered those laws' or principles which, as he 
thought, proved 'descent with modification.' Neither his 
father nor his grandfather was acquainted with the 'laws' 
of evolution discovered by Darwin, yet they were unbe- 
lievers. 

"Dr. -Strickler is inclined to deny, on what he deems 
good authority, that evolution is taught at Clarksville. 
Now, I see in the official catalogue of that University that 
LeConte's Geology is a text-book. I know that book. I 
love its distinguished author. He was my teacher in col- 
lege, and afterwards he was a consistent member of the 
church of which I was pastor. At my request he taught 
with great ability a Bible-class for young men. He has 
not surrendered his faith in Christ ; but his geology is 
an evolutionistic book from cover to cover ! So is Dana's 
Geology, also in the catalogue. Now, will some one tell 
me how such books can be used without teaching evolu- 
tion ? Our brethren will be in a dilemma, too, if they 
change their text-books. They will either be compelled to 
give up geology, or to use text-books that are out of date. 

"Dr. Robert Flint, the ablest man in Scotland perhaps, 
who now fills the chair of Theology in the University of 
Edinburgh, follows exactly the same course as is taken 
by Dr. Woodrow. In his able book on "Theism" he 
argues with consummate ability to show that all of Dar- 
win's 'laws of evolution,' 'heredity,' 'variability,' 'over- 
production with struggle for existence,' 'natural selection 
with survival of the fittest' — each and all of these 'laws,' 
or 'uniformities,' demand for rational explanation Infi- 
nite Wisdom. He is careful to add that, while opposing 
and rejecting Darwin's theology, he has nothing to say 
against Darwin's science. My brethren on the other side 
of this question are good men, but I believe Dr. Flint's 
course the wiser. 



532 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



"This plan (of detecting the false theology which is 
mingled with other elements in theories intended by their 
authors to be used against Christianity and refuting the 
theology) is also followed by Farrar — not the dean of 
that name — in his ; Bampton Lectures.' So much is Dr. 
Woodrow's plan like that pursued in Farrar's Critical 
History of Free Thought that I was surprised when he 
told me that he had never read that masterly defence of 
Christianity. I have been accustomed to place the volume 
in the hands of friends troubled with religious doubts. 
Again and again have I been told that they consider it 
among the ablest defences of religion. I say again that 
this plan is wiser than the one which we are advised to 
follow here." 

The speaker said that he desired in the most emphatic 
way to testify before all to the e;reat personal benefit re- 
ceived from Dr. Woodrow's method of dealing with diffi- 
cult questions of interpretation. "First. I knew him as 
my teacher in the Seminary, then as an older brother 
when I was pastor to his family, and now as my senior col- 
league in the Theological Seminary. A more reverent, 
believing student and teacher of God's holy word," said 
he, "I have never known. I believe that none living ex- 
ceed him in devotion to God's word and our Confession 
of Faith. He has told us how carefully, how long, how pa- 
tiently, he has studied the question now before you ; how 
he has withheld decision until sufficient light has come. 
For doing so he has been blamed on this floor — I think, 
wrongly. He is cautious by nature. The scientific mind 
is cautious in forming opinions. And what shall we say 
to this believing, prudent scholar — this student both of 
nature and the Bible ? Can we tell him that we know 
better than he does ( Have we studied the difficult sub- 
ject for years and years as he has studied it i Brethren, 
I hope we will go slowly in matters of this sort. The 
church has compromised herself again and again by haste 
in such matters, and in so doing she has unintentionally 
ruined souls whom she greatly desired to save. Let us 
think well before we close Dr. TVoodrow's lips, lest men be 
tempted into thinking that there is a conflict between 
science and the Bible." 



CONTROVERSIES OE SCIENCE. 



533 



Attorney-General Clifford Anderson referred to the 
legal question raised by Dr. Strickler. He read the deed, 
and said the regulation of the professorship was wholly 
in the discretion of the directors of the Seminary. He 
saw not the slightest legal difficulty in the way. He 
said the question of vital importance was not whether 
evolution was true or false, but whether it is contrary to 
the word of God. Some brethren insist that we must 
settle this scientific question, but the church has no more 
right to settle a question of science than a question in 
politics. We cannot treat scripture literally always, or 
we would be compelled to say that the world was made in 
six days of twenty-four hours each. "Is the language that 
man is made of dust any plainer than that which tells us 
that the sun stood still when Joshua commanded it ? A 
comparison of this passage with others, according to our 
admitted rule, will show that it is not literal dust that is 
spoken of. I care nothing for evolution. I am only con- 
cerned about the upholding of God's word, and I am not 
much concerned about that. Why ? Because I know that 
God's word will stand anyway. I am ready to say to 
science : Do what you can ; God's word will remain. I 
am not in favor of teaching evolution, but I do want the 
Perkins Professor to teach the relation between religion 
and science. The church, if it closes his mouth, will con- 
fess that it cannot grapple with these great questions. If 
science discovers new truths, it is his duty to examine 
them. We are not afraid. Christ is our Captain, and the 
Bible our guide." 

On motion, the Synod resolved to limit the further de- 
bate to three hours, Dr. Woodrow to have one, Dr. Clisby 
one, and Dr. Strickler one. 

Rev. Dr. Clisby said : "What are you going to do ? If 
you silence your professor, do you think you can silence 
the inquiries that are being made everywhere on this sub- 
ject ? When your students ask him how they shall meet 
these inquiries when they go out to preach, he can only 
say, 'I cannot tell you, my mouth is closed.' Will you 
change your professor ? What good will that do, when 
you have seen that the almost unanimous verdict of men 
capable of filling his chair is, that Dr. Woodrow is right ? 



534 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



As a last resort, will you abolish the professorship ? 
Then science will say, you dare not meet us. You were 
brave enough when the battle was in the dim realm of 
metaphysics; now that it is transferred to the clear field 
of physics, you have beaten an inglorious retreat. Athe- 
istic science ! We are warned that we must not add to the 
word of God, but remember that it is a two-edged respon- 
sibility. If Ave declare that God has spoken as to the mode 
of his creation where he has not, we are as guilty as if we 
said he has not spoken where he. has." 

Professor Woodrow rose and amid the profoundest 
silence said : "Mr. Moderator, in declining the privilege, 
if that is what you call it, which you have extended to me 
to occupy one hour of your time, I desire to express my 
profound appreciation for the words of affection, of con- 
fidence and of admiration with which most of the speeches 
you have heard have superabounded. The admiration I 
do not deserve. I claim no originality for the discovery 
of the true or for the discovery of the false. I wish to 
say, in regard to the frequent assertion of my not being 
on trial, that while it is true I stand here as one of you, 
yet it is a shame and an outrage that I can say, in fact and 
in truth, that I am on trial, but without the safeguard 
thrown around me that I had a right to expect. Here, 
months after I have been accused of doing that which is 
against our standards, I am unchallenged by any form of 
legal proceedings. There are two tribunals to which I 
am amenable, and although these charges are constantly 
reiterated, they are not put in such a form that I can de- 
mand the proof. They are false ; and I charge that, from 
this time forth, if any presbyter throughout the church 
shall bring such accusation in other than the due form, 
he must stand convicted as a slanderer. I demand a 
trial. You may go on and try me and condemn me by in- 
direction if you will, but I appeal to> God against such 
injustice." 

Rev. Dr. Strickler said : "I deny that the Synod is at- 
tempting to arraign itself against science. Dr. Woodrow 
ought to teach science, but he should teach it only to* the 
point where it begins to impinge on the word of God, and 
no further. In our view, his teaching on evolution passes 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



535 



that point. He may teach all the science he knows about 
evolution or any other science up to the point I have 
indicated. We are not willing as our agent he shall say 
thi t evolution is 'probably true/ Does he teach evolution ? 
Th kt question was asked this afternoon by a brother who 
requested a categorical answer. No answer was given 
him. If Dr. Woodrow does not teach evolution, is it not 
easy tc tell us so ? I will pause if any one knows the fact 
that he does not. Dr. Woodrow' s theory is inconsistent 
with the statement that we read so clearly, that God made 
man out of the dust of the earth. If the Bible had meant 
to tell us that man was made out of inorganic dust, how 
could it have put it any plainer than that \ We have been 
told the opinions of a great number of experts in science. 
There are experts in language as well as in science. They 
have studied the meaning of this passage, and I do not 
find any difference between them. They all say dust 
means dust. The experts of science are brought out of 
their sphere into this field, and put against the experts in 
language, to find a new meaning for these words. I said 
that I did not know any scientific man who agreed with 
Dr. Woodrow on this question. I did not trust my own 
knowledge on this question, but Dr. Adams and I sent this 
telegram to Sir William Dawson to ascertain what he 
knew about it : 'Do you know any evolutionists who be- 
lieve simply that Adam was evolved, but that Eve was cre- 
ated from Adam's rib. If so, how many?' To-day we 
received an answer. Sir William Dawson telegraphs as 
follows : 'Don't know any one avoiding the text difficulty 
in that way.' 

a The Perkins professorship was founded to evince the , 
harmony of science and God's word. Dr. Woodrow tells 
us harmony is unattainable. He goes so far, I think, as to 
say that it is folly to seek for harmony. The conse- 
quences of this teaching must be disastrous to the Sem- 
inary. The Synods of Nashville, of Memphis, of Ken- 
tucky, have withdrawn from its support, and the Synod 
of South Carolina, right at its home, is seriously alien- 
ated from it. No one of our church courts has acted 
which has not condemned it, Give him permission to 
teach this thing, and in a short while there will be nobody 



536 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



there to teach. The First Presbyterian Church of At- 
lanta, one of our most important churches, has declared 
that it will not give a cent to Education until this question 
is settled. Other churches will do likewise. They do lot 
want this theory taught there. You have many la:ge 
subscriptions for your Seminary. If you sanction this 
theory, you will probably have to sue for most of thorn in 
the civil courts." 

At the conclusion of Dr. Strickler's remarks the ques- 
tion was put on the adoption of the majority report and 
resulted: ayes, sixty; nays, twenty. 

Protest. — A protest against this action, signed by ten 
of the members, was presented, and allowed to go to 
record. 

The grounds of the protest were threefold: (1), That 
this action defeats the very purpose for which the Perkins 
chair was established; (2), That it was in violation of 
the constitution of the Seminary, inasmuch as synod at- 
tempts to control the action of the board in matters en- 
trusted to that body by the constitution; (3), That it 
was a virtual condemnation of the Perkins Professor 
without according him a trial by the board, as provided in 
the constitution of the Seminary. 

Reply. — The Committee on the Seminary was ap- 
pointed to prepare a reply. In their reply the committee 
affirm: (1), That Synod does not propose to prevent the 
teaching of science in Columbia Seminary, but only the 
teaching of evolution as contained in the address of Pro- 
fessor Woodrow; (2), That the action was not unconsti- 
tutional, as the constitution accords the Synod the power 
of controlling the Seminary through the board; (3), 
That its action has particular reference to the Board of 
Directors, and that the condemnation of Professor Wood- 
row was only incidental. 

The other two controlling Synods of Alabama and 
South Georgia and Florida held their annual meeting 
shortly after the Synod of Georgia. I have no means of 
reporting the debates in these two last named synods ; but 
I am able to state that they also voted to instruct the 
board respecting Dr. Woodrow' s views as the other con- 
trolling synods had done. 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



537 



A Meeting of the Board. 

On the 10th of December , 1884, the Board of Directors 
again met. To a large extent, it was composed of new 
members. A paper was presented at this meeting, refer- 
ring in detail to the action of the four synods regarding 
Dr. Woodrow's address, and their specific directions to 
the board to prevent his giving snch instructions in the 
Seminary as agreed with that address ; and referring also 
to Dr. Woodrow as having announced that if he continued 
to be their professor, he would hereafter teach as probably 
true the hypothesis of evolution. The paper then called 
for the appointment of a committee to wait on Dr. Wood- 
row and ask for his resignation. This paper was adopted 
by vote — ayes, eight ; noes, four. 

Dr. Woodrow stated, in his written reply, that he had 
no desire to continue to teach in the name and by the 
authority of the synods which control the Seminary, since 
they had expressed disapprobation of his views ; but yet 
he was constrained respectfully to decline to offer his res- 
ignation, for the reason that he would thereby acquiesce 
in, and so to some extent recognize, the justice and right- 
fulness of the action of the synods on which they based 
their request, which he regarded as illegal in form and 
incorrect in fact. 

The Professor continued : "The resolutions adopted by 
three of the synods, to which you refer, condemn with 
greater or less clearness my teaching as unscriptural and 
contrary to our standards, and this condemnation has been 
expressed without judicial investigation, by which alone 
such matters can be authoritatively determined. I hold, 
on the other hand, that my teachings, so far as they are ex- 
positions of the sacred scriptures, accord perfectly in every 
particular with the teachings of the Confession of Faith 
and the Catechisms ; and so far as they relate to natural 
science, do not on any point contradict the sacred scrip- 
tures as interpreted in our standards. In view of these 
facts, I respectfully ask that you proceed to determine the 
questions as to my alleged incompetence and unfaithful- 
ness in teaching what is contrary to the sacred scriptures 
as interpreted in our standards, by a full trial, as is pro- 



538 



MY LIFE AID TIMES. 



vided in the constitution of the Seminary, Section 2, Arti- 
cle 11." 

The paper adopted by the board was : 

Inasmuch as the Rev. Dr. James Woodrow, Perkins Professor, 
has declined to appear before the Board of Directors to show cause 
why he should not be removed from his professorship; and, inas- 
much as he has already had a full hearing in person before three of 
the Synods, and through his friends and advocates before the fourth 
Synod ; and, inasmuch as these Synods have already condemned his 
views and teachings on the subject of evolution; and, inasmuch as, 
in his reply to the committee appointed to wait upon him, Dr. 
Woodrow declares his unwillingness to tender his resignation, there- 
fore, 4 

Resolved, 1. That he be, and hereby is, removed from his pro- 
fessorship, according to the authority given this board. ( See Con- 
stitution, Sec. 2, Art. 11 and 13.) 

2. That the secretary be directed to officially notify Dr. Woodrow 
of this action. 

The articles in the constitution referred to are : 

Article 11. — The Board of Directors shall have power to remove 
from his office any professor who shall be found unfaithful in his 
trust, or incompetent to the discharge of his duties. Should his 
continuance in office be thought highly injurious or dangerous, the 
board may suspend him temporarily until his case can be fully 
tried; but all these acts shall be reported to the Synods, and be 
subject to their approval, as in Article 5. 

Article 13. — The board shall further make all rules and regula- 
tions, and generally do whatever they deem for the welfare of the 
Seminary, provided it shall not be repugnant to this Constitution, 
the orders of the Synods, or the Constitution of the Presbyterian 
Church. 

Thus, without being lawfully charged with the com- 
mission of any offence, without the legal trial provided for 
in the constitution, he was found guilty, condemned, sen- 
tenced to deposition from office. 

The board adjourns to meet again on January 28, 
1885, at Augusta, Ga. 

On the 20th of December, Dr. Woodrow writes to them, 
and forwards to be read at their meeting notice that he 
intended to appeal to the associated synods, not that he 
might be restored to office, for that he did not desire, 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



539 



but that in reviewing the board's action, they may order 
the trial which has hitherto been refused. 

It now became the duty of the four synods controlling 
the Seminary to consider this action at their approaching 
meeting, and to decide whether or not it was in accordance 
with the constitution. 

Another Meeting of the Board. 

Precisely one year after this dismissal of Dr. Woodrow 
from his professorship, the Board of Directors met again 
in the Seminary Chapel at Columbia on the 10th of De- 
cember, 1885. All the members of the board were pres- 
ent, several being new members, in place of some whose 
terms had expired. The meeting commenced at 9 :30 the 
morning of the 10th, and continued in session, with brief 
intervals for dinner and supper, until 1 :30 on the morn- 
ing of the 11th. Then they took a recess until 9:30 a. m., 
and continued in session until noon of the 11th, when 
they finally adjourned. Evidently their discussions were 
warm. The Charleston Neivs and Courier of December 
12th published a brief, but sufficiently complete, report 
of the proceedings of this meeting, which I make use of 
just as it appeared. 

The matter of chief interest before the board was the Woodrow 
case. At the opening of the session a paper was adopted which 
recognized Dr. Woodrow as still the legal incumbent of the Perkins 
chair of Natural Science as applied to religion. In view of the fact 
that the action of the Synods had nullified the effort last year to 
remove him, the treasurer was instructed to pay him his salary for 
the past year, as he was held to have been in office during that 
time. He was requested to state to the board whether or not he 
would comply, in his teachings, with the orders of the Synods last 
year, prohibiting the teaching of his views of evolution in the Sem- 
inary. The paper embracing these three heads, the recognition of 
"his possession of the chair, the order to have his salary paid, and 
the inquiry as to his compliance with the requirements of the 
Synods, was adopted by a vote of seven to six, the South Carolina 
and Florida directors voting solidly for it, and the Georgia and 
Alabama members being equally solid against it. Pending the con- 
sideration of this paper, a resolution had been presented as a subr 
stitute, declaring that, inasmuch as two of the four Synods con- 
trolling the Seminary had approved his removal and withdrawn 



540 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



their endorsement of him, he was constitutionally disqualified. This 
was rejected, six votes being cast for and seven against it. 

In reply to the resolution adopted, Dr. Woodrow stated that he 
would abide by the instructions of the Synods. 

Immediately after this reply was received, a resolution was 
adopted by a vote of eight to five, requesting Dr. Woodrow to resign 
in order to stop the agitation, and promote the highest interests of 
the Seminary. This resolution was dispatched to Dr. Woodrow at 
about midnight. He replied that he did not see his way clear to 
answer the request at present. 

Various resolutions were then presented by the minority in order 
to effect his removal. One was to declare the Perkins chair vacant, 
and another to suspend him from his professorship until his trial 
before the Augusta Presbytery should have reached a decision. But 
they were all voted down by the inexorable seven to six on consti- 
tutional grounds. 

At 1:30 a recess was taken. When the board met, at 9:30 A. M., 
a protest was presented by the minority, which was entered on the 
minutes and duly answered by the majority. Before the board ad- 
journed the members constituting the minority asked to be excused 
from any further participation in the proceedings of the board. It 
is stated that they prophesied the destruction of the Seminary, 
threatened the withdrawal of the Georgia and Alabama Synods, and 
predicted that many students would at once leave the Seminary. 
There are only about twenty left. 

The members of the majority say that by their action they felt 
that they were conforming to the Constitution of the Seminary and 
the direction of the Synods. They expect a continuance of the agi- 
tation against Dr. Woodrow and a bitter struggle. It was supposed 
that the minority were opposing evolution and not Dr. Woodrow, 
but that the antipathy extends to the Perkins Professor seems to be 
established by the fact that, when he agreed not to teach evolution, 
they still opposed him as vehemently as ever. The majority insist 
that the minority could reach Dr. Woodrow by presenting charges 
against him, but that no formal accusation looking to a trial was 
made against him, although it was invited. 

To an unecclesiastical mind the situation appears to be this: The 
Synods forbid Dr. Woodrow to teach his theory of evolution. He 
agrees that he will not do so, but proposes to solve the problem by 
not teaching anything whatever on the subject. The Anti- Woodrow 
people are not content with this, but desire that the professor shall 
expound evolution to the disadvantage of the theory. It is alto- 
gether improbable that he will stultify himself by doing so. Dr. 
Woodrow expects to resume his duties at once. He went to the 
Seminary to-day to meet the students and have his rooms prepared. 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIEXCE. 



541 



EVOLUTION" IN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 

The evolution controversy having agitated not only the 
four controlling synods, but a number of other synods and 
presbyteries during the whole of the years 1884 and 1885, 
now passes into the General Assembly of 1886, which 
• was to meet in the city of Augusta. There are seven pres- 
byteries which send up overtures to that Assembly, calling 
its attention in one form or another to this subject. Im- 
mediately after the election of the Moderator and Tem- 
porary Clerks, the resolution offered by the Rev. Dr. 
George D. Armstrong was unanimously adopted, calling 
on the Moderator to appoint a special committee upon 
overtures from several presbyteries which had been pub- 
lished as on the way to this Assembly. The Moderator 
appointed a committee of thirteen, of which Dr. Arm- 
strong was chairman. 

On the fourth day of the Assembly's proceedings the 
consideration of papers from the Special Committee on 
Evolution was begun, the majority report of the com- 
mittee being as follows: 

To the several overtures on the subject of the evolution of man 
sent up by the presbyteries, the General Assembly returns answer as 
follows, viz. : 

The church remains at this time sincerely convinced that the 
Scriptures, as truly and authoritatively expounded in our Confes- 
sion of Faith and Catechisms, teach — 

That Adam and Eve were created, body and soul, by immediate 
acts of Almighty power, thereby preserving a perfect race unity ; 

That Adam's body was directly fashioned by Almighty God, with- 
out any natural animal parentage of any kind, out of matter pre- 
viously created from nothing; 

And that any doctrine at variance therewith is a dangerous error, 
inasmuch as, in the methods of interpreting Scripture, it must de- 
mand, and, in the consequences which by fair implication it will 
involve, it will lead to the denial of doctrines fundamental to the 
faith. Geo. D. Armstrong, Chairman. 

Wm. F. Jtjnkin, 
R. K. Smoot, 
G. B. Strickleb, 
L. C. Vass, 

A. X. HOLLIFIELD, 

M. Van Lear, 
E. B. Fulton, 
D. IS T . Kennedy. 



542 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



Kev. T. E. Smith, for himself and William Flinn, 
D. D., members of that committee, presented a minority 
report, which is as follows : 

We, the undersigned members of the Special Committee on Evo- 
lution, recommend that the General Assembly decline to make a 
deliverance on the subject: 1. Because the answer which is invoked 
by those overtures, if given, would violate our Constitution (vide 
Confession of Faith, Chap. xxxi.. p. 4 | . 2. Because the word of God, 
as interpreted by our standards, gives the faith of the church. 3. 
Because before one of our lower courts a concrete case is pending 
involving the matter of these overtures. 

Wm. Flinn, 
Theo. E. Smith. 

Also the following paper was presented by the Rev. F. 
L. Ferguson, another member of the committee : 

The undersigned member of your Committee on Overtures on 
Evolution would recommend the appointment of a special committee 
to draft a pastoral letter to the churches and presbyteries of the As- 
sembly, embodying the following points: 

1. A recognition of the alarm and uneasiness pervading the church 
on account of the evolution discussion, and that this alarm and un- 
easiness are not unfounded. 

2. A reiteration of our loyalty to the symbols as the correct inter- 
pretation of the Holy Scriptures and determination to defend them 
against any interpretation which would mar their historic sense or 
contradict any traditional doctrine of our faith. 

3. The original application of the law contained therein belongs 
to the presbyteries, and the Assembly considers them competent for 
their functions; neither would it usurp or forestall this function, 
nor hamper them in its performance by granting any in thesi de- 
liverance which could be construed into an anticipatory exposition 
of the law, but could not be of binding force. 

4. The Assembly assures its presbyteries that the highest court of 
the church will be ready, at the proper time, to uphold and endorse 
any judicial action of the presbyteries founded on the constitutional 
law of the church. (Signed) Francis L. Ferguson. 

A motion to adopt the majority report was superseded 
by a motion to substitute the report of the minority. 

The reading of these papers was called for, after which 
the discussion upon the majority report was opened by 
Rev. Dr. G. D. Armstrong, it being first agreed that Dr. 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



543 



Woodrow, who was a member of the Assembly, should 
have two hours to present his views, and those who fa- 
vored the minority reports should have two hours more ; 
that afterward those who favored the majority report 
should have three hours to present their views, and that 
the chairman might have half an hour to conclude. 

Dr. Armstrong said the question before the Assembly 
came in due form and order, that is, on overtures from 
sundry presbyteries. "When we want a clear-cut decision 
from the highest court it is best obtainable by overtures. 
When matters come up in judicial form, they are apt to 
be encumbered with side issues, and it is difficult to get 
a clear-cut decision. It is said it may hereafter come be^ 
fore us in judicial form, but of that we are not assured." 

Dr. Woodrow rose and said : "Proceedings have been 
actually begun and the indictment served." 

Dr. Armstrong replied: "Well, suppose the judicial 
case should reach us, it will certainly be complicated with 
other matters. We are told that the synods which have 
charge of the Columbia Seminary have a deep interest in 
this question, and a judicial process against Dr. Wood- 
row is already begun in the Augusta Presbytery. Let the 
disturbed synods settle it their own way, but outside of 
these synods we have a question to settle. Overtures come 
to us from all over the church", asking us to- give a distinct 
deliverance that will give them peace. There is general 
trouble on this question throughout the whole church; 
they want the matter satisfactorily settled. We have a 
personal interest in this matter as well as the Presbytery 
of Augusta. I say, then, it not only comes to us in a 
legitimate way, but in the best way. 

"A second point made by the minority is that this 
body can consider only ecclesiastical matters. They do 
not deny the right of the Assembly to consider this ques- 
tion when it shall come up in judicial form. Now, if it is 
ecclesiastical when in judicial form, it must be equally 
ecclesiastical when in the form of memorial or overture. 
The word ecclesiastical is used in contradistinction to 
political and civil. 

"Prom the form in which. God has seen fit to give his 
revelation to us, it covers in many cases the same field as 



544 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



science. In many instances it must cover the same 
ground as science, both physical and metaphysical. The 
first chapter of Genesis tells us that God created the 
heavens and the earth and man. This is a religious fact, 
which God wisely embodies in his revelation. Science 
covers the same ground. When, therefore, science at- 
tempts to cover the same ground which the church has 
preoccupied, then the monstrous claim is made that the 
church is intruding on science. Within the last century 
something that is called science has come forward, but 
all that is called science does not deserve the name ; and 
yet it claims to determine some of these questions which 
the church has always considered settled by revelation. 
Science comes in and squats on our territory. The cheek 
of the thing is monstrous. But if you will confine your- 
self to true science, there is no possible conflict between 
revelation and science. The book of nature and the book 
of revelation are both by the same God. God is true ; 
there can b6 no conflict in his various testimonies. 

"We have attempted in the majority report to hold to 
the standards. They may be right or they may be wrong, 
but to us Presbyterians they are an authoritative expo- 
sition as to what the scriptures teach. We are to interpret 
these standards in their historic sense. Creeds and cove- 
nants must be interpreted in the sense that we believe 
those who framed them gave them ; but we do not claim 
for them the authority of inspiration. When ordained, 
we accept them as containing the system of true doctrine, 
and we may not believe every point in its historical sense. 
Some of the statements of that Confession are funda- 
mental, and so are vital ; some are not so. I have doubts 
about the six days of the creation. In their historical 
sense they must certainly be taken as six days of twenty- 
four hours each, but I do not know that I am prepared to 
accept that sense ; neither do I know if I believe it means 
six years or six long periods each. I do not know now 
which I believe. So, also, our Confession teaches that a 
man must not marry any woman nearer of kin to his de- 
ceased wife than he may of kin to himself. I do not agree 
with that statement. Who, then, is to determine whether 
the historic sense is to be accepted in these cases ? The 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



545 



church. There are, therefore, certain limits to our neces- 
sary belief of the standards. ISTow^the word 'create' can 
have but one meaning, and that is immediate creation. 
That is what our creed teaches. That is what our Con- 
fession of Faith teaches. The rule is inflexible that we 
must interpret them historically, but our Book provides 
for a certain liberty of belief. Some errors of belief and 
some practical innovations may not be mischievous ones. 

"For this majority report I ask your careful consider- 
ation. It is not my paper. It is a joint work, and the 
united wisdom of all the committee. We ask that you do 
not make captious objections to its verbiage. It is the 
best we could do. We have used plain language rather 
than scientific technicalities. Science is now like the sheet 
which Peter saw lowered down from the heavens ; it is 
filled with animals of every sort, and all sorts of four- 
footed things." Dr. Armstrong went on to say that the 
Bible does not tell us Adam's body was created of clay, 
but of organic dust. "By organic dust we mean mould, 
vegetable or animal mould, as contradistinguished from 
sand or clay. But when a man says it was evolved out of 
organic dust, I cannot agree to that. I do not know what 
he means. 

"We say in our report that he was created without any 
natural animal parentage, and in a manner to preserve 
proper race unity. What do we mean by race unity ? 
That there was no more ape blood in Eve than in Adam, 
or vice versa, in this ground work for proper race unity. 
This is simply the statement of what we believe. The de- 
liverance is what we understand our standards teach. It 
was this our Westminster divines meant when they formu- 
lated these doctrines. This is no new doctrine. I have 
said, when you come to decide on limits of liberty, it 
must be determined if the error is one that strikes at the 
vitals of religion and is liable to do harm. We say these 
teachings of evolution are dangerous errors, because they 
endanger the plenary inspiration of the scriptures, and 
leave the Bible no longer worthy to be called the word of 
God. These old ministers who have been grounded in 
ihe word of God for twenty-five years are not endangered 
by the teachings, but the young men, if they adopt the 



546 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



same doctrine, are swept away. I do not believe in evolu- 
tion in any sense, and I am glad I do not ; but if you do, 
do not let it carry you to the belief that it refers to man 
made in the image of God. It will necessitate giving up 
the doctrine of the fall. According to evolution, man was 
at his lowest stage, just evolved from a brute ; how could 
he fall ? He was already as low as he could get, I want 
to hold on to those first chapters of Genesis. I believe 
the garden of Eden had as distinct a location as the city 
of Jerusalem. It is all history to me. It is a book ple- 
narily insjDired ; it is the word of God." 

Dr. Armstrong had spoken one hour and a half. 

Dr. Woodrow began with expression of his thanks for 
the two hours given him in which to explain his views. 
He heartily agreed with much that had been spoken by 
Dr. Armstrong. Anything that could lead to a doubt of 
the plenary inspiration of the scriptures should not be 
entertained by this Assembly. There was no human 
being who believed that doctrine more fully than he. 
a Show me that the opinions I hold are in opposition to 
any 'Thus saith the Lord/ and I abandon them at once. 
There is nothing in my belief that does, directly or in- 
directly, impugn one sentence in that sacred word. I 
think I can show it to be so. There is not the slightest 
doubt in my mind of the perfect historical accuracy of 
the first chapter of Genesis and of every other chapter. 

"Dr. Armstrong properly called attention to the fact 
that this question is fully before you, and you have the- 
right to discuss it ; but it is not always our duty to do 
that which it is our right and authority to do, and I think 
this is one such case. 

"It has been said, this question is not alone scientific. 
So far as it is scientific, the church has nothing to do with 
it. Dr. Armstrong said the word ecclesiastical is used in 
contradistinction to what is political or civil. The contra- 
distinction must apply also to what is scientific, and the 
church has nothing to do with any matter which is not 
ecclesiastical. Every scientific subject must be ruled out. 
In our pulpits as ministers, in our church courts as pres- 
byters, we are not to handle political or civil, or scientific 
questions. But while agreeing with him in so much as- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



547 



referred to the common domain of religion and science, 
and while appreciating his charge that science was a 
squatter upon the territory of religion, and that their 
'friends the enemy' mnst get out, I would remind him 
that science has some rights as well. We who are study- 
ing God's word and works find ample testimony for him 
in both. There is just as much squatting, and it is just as 
cheeky, for the ecclesiastic to preach on science as for 
science to intrude upon the ecclesiastic. 

"You have been told, and rightly told, that an oath is 
to be taken in the sense in which it is understood by the 
imposer of the oath. 'Creeds and covenants,' rightly says 
Dr. Armstrong, 'must be interpreted in their historical 
sense.' Yet Dr. Armstrong, as you have heard, while not 
allowing me to question the word 'dust,' feels quite free 
to doubt whether the six days of Genesis are literal days, 
which he saj r s is the historic sense, or long periods ; and 
boldly declares that he does not agree with the prohibition 
of a man marrying his wife's sister. Perhaps his turning 
his back on the historic sense may not in either of these 
cases have surprised you very much. But were you not as- 
tounded when one who says I may not suggest any other 
than the ordinary interpretation of the word 'dust,' boldly 
proclaimed here before us that man was not formed, as 
the Bible says, of dust, but of organic dust, and 'by or- 
ganic dust,' says he, 'we mean, not sand or clay, but some 
kind of mould, vegetable mould or animal mould V He 
comes and says, 'Oh ! no, sand and dust — that won't do.' 
I can show you that that will not do because there are 
silicates and silicic acids, etc., in these which do not ap- 
pear in the composition of man. These component parts 
are declared to exist in sand and clay by science. Now, 
I, who am held up as a heretic, would not on any account 
subordinate the word of God in this way to the teaching of 
science. Here look and see what a conspicuous example 
the distinguished gentleman who addressed you this 
morning has given us of the teachings of science and of 
the necessity of standing by the historical sense of what is 
written in our standards. He tells you that what he has 
just expressed about the meaning of the word dust is not 
the historical sense of that word, and that science confirms 



548 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



what he says; and this being scientific, you must ac- 
cept it. 

"I accepted, as you accepted, and I now accept, every 
word in this story of the creation contained in our stan- 
dards. I believe that God created man from the dust, and 
woman from the rib taken from the man's side. If I had 
full power to rewrite our standards, I would not wish to 
change a sentence, word or letter from that which already 
exists. 

"The great difficulty is that those entertaining ideas 
differing from the majority report are misunderstood. 
This whole subject is a new one. It was not in existence 
until a comparatively late period. It must pass through 
many periods before it reaches an easily understood 
shape. You have been called on to condemn the heresy 
of evolution without any qualification, and then in so far 
as it relates to man. Let me read to you from a book by 
Dr. Armstrong. He sets out a scheme of evolution thus : 
'The oak passes into the silk worm, the silk worm into 
the frog, the frog into man.' I never saw any scientist 
who even came in a thousand miles of believing such a 
caricature. Is it strange you should say, 'Out of my way' 
with such absurdity ? If this profound student of half a 
century errs thus in representing evolution, what can we 
expect from those who have had no such opportunity for 
study ? Again, Dr. Armstrong has announced in this 
book a fact that is the most important step in geology of 
the last half century, if true ; and he asserts it upon his 
own observation. It is absolutely new to every geologist 
in the world. He says that on the western flank of the 
Alleghenies, in Virginia, grow corals and sponges of the 
same character as those now living upon the Florida 
coast. 

" There is much of doubt hanging over new sciences, 
and we ought not to be too hurried in the expression of 
our opinions. It is desirable that the church should take 
more time before giving a definite utterance of its opinion 
upon evolution. I do not want to reflect on our prede- 
cessors, but whenever the church has undertaken to decide 
any question showing the relation of science and religion, 
she has always been totally wrong, invariably and dread- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



549 



fully wrong. Fifteen hundred years ago the church 
taught that the idea was not only ridiculous, but contrary 
to the scriptures, that the earth was round. In the six- 
teenth century the mobility of the earth and fixedness of 
the starry system was condemned by the Christian church. 
The law of gravitation was condemned as taking away 
from God the power he had of controlling his universe. 
Shall we learn anything or not ? Shall we not learn that 
we must take a little time to decide these questions ? 

"The infallible rule for interpreting scripture is by the 
scripture itself. Things not clear in themselves are else>- 
where sufficiently explained to give proper understanding. 
The scriptures principally teach what man is to believe 
concerning God, and what duties God requires of man. 
'Not only do they principally teach this, but they teach 
nothing else. The Bible was not intended to teach the 
relation between things, but between God and man. 

"You are requested to say that Adam and Eve were 
created by an immediate act, so as to preserve the perfect 
race unity. Now, if you are going to explain, you ought 
to make things plainer. What do you mean by imme- 
diate ? Do you mean without media % There were the 
dust, the rib, as media in this creation. It cannot mean, 
therefore, without media. It must mean, then, instan- 
taneous. Who told you it was instantaneous % Did God ? 
Does he tell you how long he took to make man ? He says 
he did it. He did it with dust of the ground. But does 
he say he did it instantaneously ? There is no hint, how- 
ever slight, that it was so. Neither the standards nor the 
word of God affirm it. You are adding to the word of 
God, and requiring those under you to believe that which 
God has not spoken. That Adam's body was directly 
fashioned by Almighty God, neither our standards nor the 
Bible say anything of the sort. The Bible is absolutely 
silent as to mode and time. If you assert that you know, 
you err. You assert that which you will not find author- 
ity for in the word of God. 

"This majority report affirms that the first pair were 
created without any natural animal parentage. How do 
you know this ? They were created, it is said, from dust. 
How long had this dust been created ? Some will answer 



550 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



that it was created a few days before. Others, that it was 
created ages — long geological ages — before. Xow, what 
changes occurred in those ages % You do not know. If 
you adopt this report, you will be adding, not only to our 
standards unlawfully, but you will be adding to God's 
word that which he never taught, that which it is no- 
where intimated he meant to teach. We have no right to 
interpret God's thoughts. Are we fit to say what God'- 
way would be ? God leads his children through a path 
beset with pain and agony. When our children ask for 
bread, we give it them. But God says, Get your bread 
by the sweat of your brow. His thoughts are not our 
thoughts, his ways are not our ways. There are many 
things we have to confess that we cannot understand. 
What was the nature and the meaning of that 'still small 
voice' which said, 'Let there be' ( I do not know ; but I 
knoAv that God caused that voice to come, and I know 
what it effected, and that is all that it is necessary for me 
to know. I know God created man, but I do not know how 
he did it, and I am not going to thrust forward my own 
peculiar views upon a matter which God in no way 
teaches. 

"It is said that we are told by God in his word that he 
made the body of Adam from literal dust. But what is 
said on that subject is said almost word for word in re- 
gard to the lower animals. What may be true of the for- 
mation of one may be true of the other ; and any one who 
admits that the lower animals may have been formed by 
an evolutionary process must admit that the body of man 
may have been formed in the same manner. Xow, Dr. 
Armstrong says in his book, 'The hypothesis of evolution, 
in its most limited range, is not irreconcilable, as I think, 
with the Bible account of the creation of plants and ani- 
mals in the world.' Are you going in the face of what is 
told you by this learned divine ? But the same language 
is used with regard to the lower animals that is used of 
the body of man. Are you going, in this hurried and ill- 
advised way, to add to the standards of the church ? 

"You are told that this doctrine, if accepted as proba- 
bly true, will endanger the doctrine of the federal head- 
ship of Adam. If this is so, then it is untrue. But it 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



551 



passes my comprehension to see wherein the connection 
lies. It cannot make any possible difference what God 
used. Who was Adam ? Was Adam that which was 
made of the dust of the ground \ ~No, the soul was the 
man, and nothing became man until it was united with 
the soul, and if there had been a million forms like 
Adam's, it did not become man or Adam until God placed 
the soul within it. 

"I will not enter upon the sentimental side of the 
question. I have presented in brief some of the principal 
reasons why you should not now consider these overtures 
that have been submitted to the Assembly. But your 
answer should be to them: For the teachings of the 
church we refer you to the standards of the church. I 
would urge that you abstain from what would be a griev- 
ous wrong, and must prejudice a case now pending in a 
lower court of this church. 

"I have spoken as long as I care to now ; if I shall see 
fit at some later time to avail myself of the remaining 
time belonging to me, I should like the privilege to do so." 

Rev. Dr. R. K. Smoot said it was the clear right and 
duty of the Assembly to give decisions against errors of 
doctrine and immorality in practice. Here was a case 
brought before the Assembly by overtures from eight 
presbyteries. These presbyteries have a right to your tes- 
timony against the erroneous doctrine now in question. 
Dr. Smoot insisted that a decision from this Assembly 
could not interfere unfavorably with the case now said to 
be before the Augusta Presbytery. For Dr. Woodrow to 
say that our decision must affect unfavorably his case 
before a lower court, is not that a constructive plea of 
guilty ?" The remainder of his speech was an earnest de- 
fence of the necessity and propriety of the committee's 
affirming that Adam's body was created by an immediate 
act of almighty power. "The word 'immediate' is over 
and against evolution. As long as you have immediate in 
there, you are against evolution. Some modest, timid 
member will rise and say, 'Brother Moderator, I think the 
trouble will be at an end if we strike out "immediate" in 
the report.' I have no doubt it will, but that word 'im- 
mediate' is the gravamen of the issue. I got that word 



552 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



from the gentleman himself. Stick to it. It is opposed 
to evolution. Hold to it." 

Rev. F. L. Ferguson said: "I agree with Dr. Arm- 
strong and Dr. Woodrow both upon the general issue be- 
fore us, but, as to just how Adam was made, I am be- 
ginning to believe that I do not know what I believe. 
[Laughter.] The one with his chemical and the other 
with his natural process have pretty thoroughly confused 
me. [Laughter.] I doubt the legality of that majority 
report, 

"I thought I saw in the argument before the committee 
infinite complications, and the arguments to-day do not 
improve things. What an imbecility it is to urge that 
Dr. Woodrow makes a constructive plea of guilty when 
he says that a decision against him in this highest court 
might have an unfavorable effect upon the lower court 
which is about shortly to try his case ! The idea seems 
to be that it is no matter whether his presbytery decides 
against him, because he can then appeal to his Synod ; but 
is it not very plain that if the synod decide against him 
he will be cut off from our highest court, because it will 
have already decided against him ? 

"I doubted the expediency of this course at first, and 
I am more confirmed now in my belief. Advocates of the 
majority report think it w T ill settle the whole matter. 
Will it settle it here in Augusta ? The report of that 
minority committee is the true doctrine of the Presbyte- 
rian Church. It is urged that this trouble is widespread. 
There are only seven overtures; that leaves sixty-one 
presbyteries that do not seem to have any trouble. But, 
be it widespread or not, the presbyteries are able to deal 
with this matter. Since this matter has come up, several 
members have said to me, 'I believe your paper is the true 
thing, but there is a demand for a deliverance upon this 
question.' There was a time in the committee when a 
paper might have passed that, for conspicuous and pic- 
turesque ambiguity, would have excelled anything ever 
introduced into this body. The members did not endorse 
what it said, but it was an easy way out of the trouble, 
and in order to get rid of the thing, they were about to 
vote for it. 2s"ow, I say if this minority paper is true 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIEXCE. 



553 



Presbyterian doctrine, let us vote for it. If the majority 
report is true doctrine, let us vote for that. I am no ad- 
vocate of evolution, but I do not want this Assembly to 
take a step which may prove an unwise step, or by its 
action to prejudge a case pending in a lower court/'' 

Rev. Dr. G. B. Strickler said: "If we adopt this evolu- 
tion doctrine, it brings us into odium, because it was of 
anti-Christian origin. The originator of it ivas Charles 
Darwin, and the propagators, Huxley, Tyndall and 
others, pronounced sceptics and infidels. If the Presby- 
terian Church declares that it believes we came from 
monkeys, it will cause prejudice against the church. If 
this doctrine is admitted by us, our standards must be 
rewritten. Our standards say man has fallen physically, 
morally, and in every way. According to evolution, he 
is now more perfect than when he came from the hand of 
God. According to the doctrine of evolution, he is im- 
measurably above what he was before he had sinned at all. 

"According to what has been said before, if we would 
interpret scripture correctly, we must compare scrip- 
ture with scripture. Was this doctrine of evolution got- 
ten from scripture I Xo ; it was originated in the investi- 
gations of science. The scripture was brought into har- 
mony with this teaching of science by giving it a meaning 
as different from its real meaning as it is possible for it 
to be. You can see that a tremendous amount of force 
was brought to bear to accomplish this thing. 

''The injury that this doctrine is doing renders it im- 
portant that the church should take action upon this mat- 
ter Avherever it has an opportunity to do so properly." 

Rev. Dr. W. F. Junkin: "It has been said the intro- 
duction of this subject prejudices a case in a lower court, 
and that it is grievous injustice to decide it. In the 
concrete case below, the facts and law come up. We sim- 
ply define what is the law as held by our church. The 
case below must stand or fall upon the facts as judged by 
the law which we are asked to clearly define. Our report 
attacks no individual. We did not name any man. We 
said there were certain evils. If there is poison in the 
well at which my children are drinking, it is vastly more 
important to me to have the well purified or the water cut 



554 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



off from my family than to know who put the poison in 
it ; but if a man comes forward and says he did it, I fly 
at him in just indignation and hold him for proper pun- 
ishment. It is not so important to us who caused this 
trouble as to end the trouble. If we do not come to a 
deliverance in this matter, we are false to our vows and 
our God. These overtures are respectful and earnest. 
They say, We appeal to you to know if these teachers 
shall be allowed to contradict the teachings of God as we 
understand them. Are we competent to give this utter- 
ance ? It is said we are not experts in science and we do 
not know it all. But we do not need to know what is evo- 
lution. We do not have to give a deliverance on evolution, 
but upon the word of God and our standards. The church 
does not want a deliverance on evolution. Our science is 
a science that arises above this dust, like the sun above 
the grovelling insects upon the ground. 

"There is need for a deliverance. We are competent 
and authorized to give it. Kow, what should be the char- 
acter of that utterance ? We are not here to say whether 
the Confession of Faith is true or not. We are not here 
to say the Bible is true. As Dr. Armstrong said, 'We 
have already cast that anchor out, and that anchor holds.' 
We are not here to make a deliverance on science. Who 
told you the first chapters of Genesis were true? The 
other chapters told me so ; the Bible tells me so. Study 
the Bible with the Bible. 

"Our utterance should be a clean-cut, clear and unmis- 
takable deliverance of what we believe to be the doctrine 
of the Confession of Faith and the Catechism in refer- 
ence to the creation of man. You have such an utterance 
in the majority report now before this Assembly, and I 
hope it will be adopted as the voice of this Assembly." 

Rev. T\ L. Ferguson concluded the discussion upon the 
question of evolution on the part of the minority in a 
speech of five minutes yet remaining to that side. He 
said : "I would like to know if these brethren mean this 
Assembly must answer 'yes' or mo' to these overtures. If 
seven presbyteries have the right to demand a categorical 
construction of any question — of this question — then, 
why shall not, at the next Assembly, other presbyteries 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



555 



come forward and demand at our hands that we con- 
strue the creation of the world in six days % What was 
meant by six days? That question, if urged (and why 
may it not be?), will carry us into endless and aimless 
troubles and discussions. We have heard it several times 
already on this floor that there is doubt in the minds of 
some of the fathers in the church on this question. If 
these seven presbyteries are in trouble, let them determine 
it for themselves. There is no widespread trouble 
throughout the church demanding action at our hands 
now that will prejudice and prejudge a case pending in a 
lower court. My time is so short that I cannot enter into 
argument, but must simply content myself with this state- 
ment. I believe the paper I have offered best meets the 
question, and I do not believe the adoption of the ma- 
jority report will be wise or expedient," 

After considerable debate, Dr. Woodrow was given 
fifteen minutes to conclude — the time left by him in his 
first speech. 

Dr. Woodrow, in conclusion : "I do not desire to force 
myself upon this Assembly. I recognize the courtesy of 
the Assembly in allowing me so much time. ' But I warn 
you that the adoption of this majority report is not only 
an arraignment of myself, but a condemnation on the 
charge of heresy of half of the Synod of South Carolina, 
a large portion of the Synods of Georgia, Alabama and 
elsewhere, and these are condemned as unfit to teach in 
the name of this church. A deliverance such as you now 
propose has no legal effect, and is not to be obeyed by any 
one who believes it is in opposition to the word of God. 
To such it would be devoid of the semblance of authority. 

"So far as I have heard, there has not been one fair 
statement of my views. Dr. Hollifield said, 'Dr. Wood- 
row says he has been for years in search of something to 
tell him what Adam was made of and added, mere is a 
Bible that will tell him.' Xow, I knew all the Bible said 
before he was born [laughter], and I believe it, too. 

"As to evolution, it is a matter of absolute indifference. 
I care nothing for it. What is evolution ( At best it is 
uothing but a hypothesis, a theory, altogether outside of 
the word of God. Like chemistry or astronomy, it is a 



556 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



science not in the word of God ; but if there is a single 
word of God that is contrary to it, that is enough to con- 
demn it with me. If this Assembly should propose to 
make any deliverance in favor of evolution, I should op- 
pose it as strongly as any member of this body. The ques- 
tion before us is, shall this Assembly inject into the word 
of God something that is not there ? You are asked to 
prescribe the time occupied by God in the creation of 
man, when God has not told you. The Bible tells us that 
God created man of dust, but it does not say how long he 
was in doing it, and you are adding your own petty no- 
tions to his ever-glorious and true word. You will be vio- 
lating the sacred trust imposed in you. You will be say- 
ing what he has not authorized you to say, speaking in his 
name what he himself has not spoken or authorized you 
to speak. I beseech yon, therefore, not for my sake, but 
that you may be true servants of the high God, that you 
do not drive away those who cannot subscribe to such a 
declaration. There is nothing in the Bible that will au- 
thorize you to say the creation was 'immediate,' and if 
you do so, you go in the face of the word of God." 

Dr. Armstrong, chairman of the committee making the 
majority report, now proceeded to close the discussion, it 
being determined that there should be no discussion by 
the members of the Assembly outside of the committee. 

He began with a vindication of his friend, Dr. Hodge, 
whom Dr. Flinn had said agreed with Dr. Woodrow, that 
the theory of evolution was not opposed to the teachings 
of the Bible. He had a letter from the Doctor read, in 
which he said, "I fully agree with you on all the grounds 
in your book," and, said Dr. Armstrong, "I do not sup- 
pose anybody will accuse me of agreeing with Dr. Wood- 
row. 

"There has been no attack on our main position as to 
the competency or authority of this body to issue a de- 
liverance, and that the interpretation of our standards 
must be in their historical sense, and that, interpreted in 
their historical sense, they do controvert this system of 
evolution. The point on which you will feel most diffi- 
culty is that the case is already before a lower court of this 
church in the way of a judicial process. But before this 



CONTROVEBSIES OF SCIENCE. 



557 



case was brought into that court, the subject had been 
taken up by different presbyteries, and they sent their 
overtures to us. There is a difference of opinions, and 
they ask us to interpret our standards. We are perfectly 
competent to do so. Suppose we wait till the synods or 
presbyteries signify their rulings, will it not have its 
moral effect upon this body when it comes before us ? Do 
not let that argument of prejudice influence you to refuse 
a decision here. There are three papers before you. The 
report of the minority is in substance that we give no 
answer. That is not a fair answer. It is not what they 
have a right to. In the other minority report, the first 
difference is that we send our views in the form of a pas- 
toral letter. 

"This paper says just as much as the paper of the ma- 
jority, but when I speak on a subject in which I have con- 
victions, I want to use language that everybody can under- 
stand. Ours is in plain language. I believe it is the pur- 
pose of this Assembly to give an answer to these over- 
tures. I deprecate this doctrine, because it impugns the 
inspiration of the word of God." 

After considerable debate as to the form in which this 
question was before the house, both minority reports were 
put to a vote and lost, and the majority report was 
adopted, on a call of the yeas and nays, by a vote of 137 
to 13. 

This vote was taken on the sixth day, and a good many 
commissioners took their departure, Dr. Armstrong, and 
it may be supposed other moderate men, amongst them. 
Evidently some of those who remained were more enthu- 
siastic than their leaders, and these, being not fully sat- 
isfied, felt that some positive action should be taken, and 
amid a good deal of confusion and a great deal of excite- 
ment, there was passed by a majority of fifty-four to 
thirty-six, in a house reduced from one hundred and fifty 
to but ninety commissioners, a paper directing the four 
controlling synods to dismiss Professor Woodrow from 
the Seminary, and appoint another in his place. In an- 
other paper, which the confused minutes say was adopted, 
though we are not told by what vote, we read as fol- 
lows : 



558 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



Your Committee on Theological Seminaries would respectfully 
report as follows: 

First, in reply to the injunction laid upon us to find and state the 
relation existing between this General Assembly and the theological 
seminaries organized within the pale of our church, we report : 

1. That this Assembly sustains very important relations to all 
such institutions; yet these relations differ somewhat according to 
the constitution and practice of each institution as ratified by the 
Assembly. 

2. That by the very genius of Presbyterianism the Assembly is 
bound to maintain a supervisory jurisdiction over these and all 
other like corporations ; and also over all schemes for religious 
work, so far as they affect the practice or doctrine of the Assembly's 
constituencies, and especially the office-bearers of the church. 

3. That this jurisdiction must in every case enable the Assembly- 
through the proper channels of authority, to keep all such institu- 
tions free from everything inconsistent with the spirit of our sys- 
tem ; and, of course, free from all teaching inconsistent with the 
word of God as expounded in our standards. 

It will be noticed that here is an attempt by the Au- 
gusta Assembly to state the true relation between the 
General Assembly and all the theological seminaries of 
our church. Nothing is said as to what is written on the 
powers of the Assembly in our Book of Church Order, 
but reference is made to the different seminary constitu- 
tions as having been ratified by the Assembly, and there is 
some allusion to the directorships of the seminaries as 
being in corporations by legislative enactment. But the 
distinct claim is made for the Assembly of supervisory 
jurisdiction over various corporations and all schemes for 
religious work, and in large measure over all the Assem- 
bly's constituencies, and especially the office-bearers of 
the church. 

The Prosecution of Dr. Woodrow before the Pres- 
bytery of Augusta. 

This trial had commenced previous to the meeting of 
the Assembly at Augusta, so far as that Dr. William 
Adams, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in that 
city, had given notice to the Presbytery of Augusta, meet- 
ing at Waynesville,Ga.,on the 17th of April, 18S6, that he 
would undertake to make out charges against Dr. Wood- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



559 



row. The indictment had also been drawn up, with the 
charges and specifications duly presented, and it had been 
duly served. The actual trial took place at the next meet- 
ing of presbytery, August 16th, at the little church of 
Bethany. 

I get the official documents I am about to present, all 
duly signed, from a pamphlet of some eighty pages octavo 
or more, whose title page reads thus : "Record and Evi- 
dence in the Case of the Presbyterian Church in the 
United States (Rev. Dr. William Adams, Voluntary 
Prosecutor) versus James Woodrow. Printed at the 
Presbyterian Publishing House, Columbia. 1888. " 
This pamphlet contains the record and evidence taken 
from the presbytery's minutes, and also all the printed 
papers referred to in the indictment. It also contains the 
records of the Synod of Georgia, which succeeded this 
presbytery's meeting. 

Record in the Case of the Presbyterian Church in the United 
States versus Rev. James Woodrow, D. D., August 16, 1886. 

The Moderator charged the court, and the indictment was then 
read as follows: 

To the Presbytery of Augusta, Ga., Waynesboro, Ga., April 17, 1886: 
Dear Brethren : In the name of the Presbyterian Church in the 
United States, I, William Adams, a member and minister of the 
Augusta Presbytery, do hereby charge and accuse the Rev. James 
Woodrow, D. D., a member and minister of the same presbytery, 
with the following offences: 

1. Teaching and promulgating opinions and doctrines in conflict 
with the sacred Scriptures as interpreted in the Confession of Faith 
and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Westminster Assem- 
bly— 

In that the said James Woodrow, on the 7th day of May, 1884, in 
an address on evolution, delivered before the Alumni Association of 
the Columbia Theological Seminary, and in the Southern Presbyte- 
rian newspaper of August 21, 1884, August 28, 1884, and October 
15, 18S5, and in speeches made in the Synods of South Carolina, 
Georgia. Alabama and South Georgia and Florida, also in an article 
published in the Southern Presbyterian Review of January, 1885, 
did teach and promulgate that the body of Adam was probably the 
product of evolution from the body of some lower animal. 

2. That the said James Woodrow, in the publications and speeches 
referred to, did teach and promulgate opinions which are of a dan- 



560 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



gerous tendency, and which are calculated to unsettle the mind of 
the church respecting the accuracy and authority of the Holy Scrip- 
tures as an infallible rule of faith — 

In that he did teach and promulgate the opinion that the body 
of Adam was probably not made or created of the dust of the ground, 
as is universally understood by the church to be the declaration of 
the word of God, but of organic matter preexisting in the body of a 
brute. 

Against the peace and purity of the church and the honor and 
majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ as King and Head thereof. 

William Adams. 

Witnesses: Rev. J. L. Girardeau, D. D., of Columbia, S. C. ; Rev. 
J. L. Rogers, of Atlanta, Ga. ; Mr. J. W. Wallace, of Augusta, Ga. 

The answer of the accused was heard, which was, "I am not 
guilty." 

Dr. Woodrow said: I here formally recognize as my own produc- 
tion, as accurately representing what I said at the times specified, 
all that is contained in my published Address on Evolution, May 7, 
1884, and in my published speech before the Synod of South Caro- 
lina, October 27 and 28, 1884. I also recognize as my own produc- 
tion the articles in the Southern Presbyterian newspaper of August 
21, 1884, August 28, 1884, October 15, 1885, referred to in the in- 
dictment. I also state that I made speeches containing the same or 
similar sentiments and views before the Synods of Georgia, Ala- 
bama, and South Georgia and Florida, and that I do now hold and 
believe to be true everything that is set forth in any of these publi- 
cations and speeches. 

Evidence for the Prosecution. 

Rev. Dr. J. L. Girardeau was sworn as a witness: 
Question by Dr. Adams : Did you or not hear Dr. Woodrow's ad- 
dress before the Alumni Association, and also before the Synod of 
South Carolina on the subject of Evolution? Answer. I heard Dr. 
Woodrow's address before the Society of Alumni, and I heard his 
speeches before the Synod of South Carolina at Greenville October, 
1884. 

Q. Tell us what was the effect of those addresses on your own 
mind? A. The effect of the address before the Society of Alumni 
was about this : I do not feel called upon to argue the case before 
this court, but simply to give evidence as a witness. The first effect 
upon my own mind was that of surprise when I heard his address 
before the Society of Alumni. I had never heard, so far as I could 
recollect, Dr. Woodrow advance the same position in regard to evolu- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



561 



tion before that time. I was gratified with the ability displayed in 
the address. I felt a natural pride in it as an intellectual achieve- 
ment, because I was a colleague with Dr. Woodrow in the same 
Seminary, and wished him success in meeting the requirements of 
the occasion, and therefore, after the delivery of the address, I ad- 
vanced to Dr. Woodrow and offered him my congratulations. I was 
at first in doubt as to the full meaning of what Dr. Woodrow said. 
Subsequently I studied the address and came to the conclusion that 
he had advocated evolution under limitations upon grounds of prob- 
ability. The effect on my mind of the speeches at Greenville was 
the conviction that Dr. Woodrow was at that time a pronounced 
evolutionist, with the limitations which he himself threw around 
his theory. I say, further, that during the interval between the 
delivery of the address and the delivery of the speeches, having be- 
come convinced that the publication of Dr. Woodrow's views would 
seriously agitate the church, I went to him personally and ac- 
quainted him with the posture of my own mind on the subject, stat- 
ing to him that, as his colleague, I could not oppose his view, even 
privately, without first apprising him of the convictions of my own 
mind, and then having so stated my own view to him, and feeling 
that I must oppose his view, I determined, in accordance with a 
resistless sentiment of honor, to resign my professorship in the 
Seminary. 

Q. From your own knowledge of the condition of our church, can 
you say whether or not those addresses have been hurtful to the 
church of God? A. I have some hesitation in answering that ques- 
tion. I cannot be the judge of ultimate results. Of course, there 
has been agitation in the church, but whether the ultimate result 
will be beneficial or hurtful, it is not for me as a witness to say. 

Q. How long have you been connected with the Columbia Semi- 
nary as a professor? A. About ten years. From January, 1876, to 
May of this year. 

Q. Is this a copy of the constitution of the Seminary? A. Yes. 

Q. Did you subscribe to Sec. 3, Art. 5? A. I subscribed to the 
pledge contained in the article. I subscribed to that pledge, written, 
I think, in the minutes of the Board of Directors, submitted to the 
General Assembly in 1876. 

Q. Read that article. (Sec. 3, Art. 5, read by the witness.) 

Q. Do you know whether the same pledge is required of every 
other professor in the Seminary ? A. I do not remember to have been 
present when that pledge was subscribed by any other professor. 
(Corrected. I think I was present when Drs. Boggs and Hemphill 
signed the pledge.) So far as I know, the pledge was in every copy 
of the constitution, and I presume they all signed. 

Dr. Woodrow here said, "I signed that pledge." 



562 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



Q. Did you not hear Dr. Woodrow refer in his Greenville speech 
to his having signed this pledge? A. I do not remember. 

Q. In the speech you heard in South Carolina, state whether there 
was any reference to any exceptions taken to any part of that 
pledge? A. He did reply to some allegations made by myself. All 
the authority I had for anything said on that subject was derived 
from Dr. Woodrow's inaugural address before the Synod of Georgia, 
and then, so far as I know, he did not file an exception formally to 
any part of the standards, but in the inaugural address defined his 
position in regard to the antiquity of the globe, affirming to be cer- 
tainly true in regard to that matter what was contrary to the his- 
toric sense of the standards. 

Q. Did he take any exception to any other article in the Confession 
of Faith or Catechisms of the church? A. I have already said that 
Dr. Woodrow did not take formal exception at first to any article so 
far as I understood him. But after the question of his installation 
as professor had been settled by the authority competent to act in 
the case, he then pronounced true his geological view as to the 
antiquity of the globe. At the same time I did not understand Dr. 
Woodrow to say that this view contravened the standards, whatever 
my belief may have been in regard to the matter. In the Synod at 
Greenville he advocated his view of evolution, which was argued 
against as contrary to the standards, but which he himself affirmed 
to be not inconsistent with them. I cannot, then, say that Dr. 
Woodrow took exception to any part of the standards while he ad- 
vocated that view, though I myself charged him with contradicting 
the standards by it. 

Q. Did you know then of any other minister, in fact of any scien- 
tist, who held the same views as the defendant then advocated with 
respect to the creation of Adam and Eve ? A. At the time of the de- 
livery of the address I did not know of any minister who held the 
same views. My reading in science is limited. So far as it went. I 
did not know of any scientific man who held the same views. At the 
meeting of the Synod in Greenville I met one person, a member of 
the Synod, who told me he agreed with Dr. Woodrow. One or two 
others seemed to lean to the view. Further I cannot say. 

Q. Before you heard those addresses, did you ever hear or know of 
such a construction placed upon the word of God or the standards 
of the church with respect to the creation of man as the construction 
placed by the defendant in those addresses? A. I remember having 
read in a certain commentary a view somewhat analogous to that 
of Dr. Woodrow, as at least not being impossible. That was Lange's 
Commentary on Genesis ; but aside from that I cannot remember 
having encountered the same construction of the Scripture. I know 
of no other. 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



563 



Q. Did you ever hear before that time of "organic dust"? A. 
Never. If I had, sir, I should have noticed it, for I considered it the 
most extraordinary combination of Avords I had ever heard. 

Q. Do you know whether that combination is to be found in dic- 
tionary, vocabulary or lexicon? A. No, sir; I could not well have 
met that combination of words in a dictionary or vocabulary or lex- 
icon, for they do not give words in combination, except in illustra- 
tive examples, and I say in brief, I never met that combination in 
any writer, so far as I can remember. 

Q. Do you recollect when the defendant was before the Synod of 
South Carolina, his having said anything respecting a change in his 
views on this subject between the time of his inaugural address as 
Perkins Professor, and the time of the address before the Synod, 
and if so, can you, as nearly as possible, tell the court what he said ? 
A. I do not remember that Dr. Woodrow distinctly said he had 
undergone a change of view. I do remember that he gave an account 
of a visit to Europe, and of his having held interviews with distin- 
guished scientific men, he being at that time opposed to evolution. I 
also heard him advocate his hypothesis of evolution powerfully be- 
fore the Synod. Not my business to draw inferences as a witness. 
He did not speak of his change of views, so far as I remember. He 
did advocate evolution in my hearing. 

Q. Were you or not aware of any unrest among the students of 
the Seminary with respect to the teachings of Dr. Woodrow previous 
to the address before the Alumni Association? Asked, objected to, 
and withdrawn. 

Q. What has been the effect, so far as you know, of these ad- 
dresses upon the minds of the students of Columbia Seminary? A. 
The question is a general one, and I scarcely know how to answer. 
The effect, so far as I knew, was to produce great discussion, but I 
knew certainly of no student who adopted Dr. Woodrow's view of 
evolution. There was one, of whom I cannot speak confidently, who 
may have leaned that way. 

Q. Do you subscribe to the Southern Presbyterian? A. I do. 

Q. Do you recollect reading a letter of mine in that paper in which 
I charged the defendant with declaring before Augusta Presbytery 
that he had four thousand constituents, to whom he was teaching 
these views; and do you recollect or not, in a subsequent issue of 
his paper, his saying that this statement was substantially true, 
only that the number was underestimated? A. I do remember the 
facts you mention. I am not positively sure as to the language of 
Dr. Woodrow. I remember the facts. 

Q. May I ask, as an expert and professor, what is the origin of 
this doctrine of evolution? Is it an outcome of the research of the 
church of God, or has it an infidel origin? A. The origin of the doc- 



564: 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



trine, so far as I know, is philosophical. I have no idea that it 
originated in Christian research. Who first originated it, I cannot 
tell. But the doctrine of evolution has been used for infidel pur- 
poses by the majority of those who hold it. I do not say Dr. Wood- 
row's hypothesis has been so used. 

Cross-examination by Dr. Woodroic. 

Q. Are you much interested in the result of this trial? A. I am 
deeply interested. I have no interest in seeing Dr. Woodrow. my 
old colleague, under the ban of the church. I cherish no malice 
against Dr. Woodrow. I forgive the injuries he has inflicted on me 
personally, and continue to pray for him and his as heretofore. But 
I am profoundly interested in the result of the discussion of his 
view. 

Q. Please state to the presbytery how you manifested that in- 
terest in seeking to influence the action of the Synod of Georgia at 
its meeting in Marietta in 1884? A. In order to answer that ques- 
tion I must give the history of the transaction. The Synod of 
South Carolina at Greenville, by a majority of fifty against forty- 
five, voted to prohibit the teaching of Dr. Woodrow*s views in the 
Theological Seminary. I learned before I left Greenville, that some 
one had telegraphed to the office of the Southern Presbyterian a 
glorious victory for Dr. Woodrow. Coming down upon the train 
after the adjournment, I heard the opinion expressed by several of 
the members of Synod that Dr. Woodrow had gained a substantial 
triumph. I knew that Dr. Mack was going to attend the meeting 
of the Synod of Georgia, and I sent a private telegram to him im- 
mediately upon my arrival in Columbia. The precise words of the 
telegram I do not know. 

Q. Are these the words, 'Tnsist Synod's action was no compro- 
mise; was definitely anti-Woodrow, so intended, so Avas"? A. That 
is the telegram. 

I meant, sir, to nail the statement that the Synod of South Caro- 
lina had gone for Dr. Woodrow as a false statement as to facts, or 
that the action was a compromise action. I had no intention to 
have Dr. Mack use that telegram publicly. It was so used. I am 
responsible for it. It was the truth. I was perfectly willing that 
the truth should be uttered and the falsehood denied. I remember 
distinctly pausing upon the composition of the telegram. The first 
words that occurred to me were like these — "Definitely opposed to 
Dr. Woodrow's teaching." but I put "anti-Woodrow," not meaning 
that the decision was opposed to Dr. Woodrow personally, but to 
his teaching, and the compound word "anti-Woodrow" simply ex- 
pressed that state of mind. I meant nothing more by it. Had I 
known that it would be read publicly, I would have been more 



CONTBOVEESIES OF SCIENCE. 



565 



cautious. I would have feared the misapprehension resulting from 
the use of the word. Dr. Woodrow knew that at the meeting of the 
Synod at Greenville, I had clearly drawn the distinction between 
him personally and his teaching. Do not know if I had the right to 
draw the inference, but I must have undergone a great change if I 
made a personal attack on Dr. Woodrow in the telegram. Dr. 
Woodrow came back from the Synods, and in his paper deliberately 
affirmed the correctness of the report that he had gained a complete 
victory at Greenville. 

Q. You have said you did not intend that telegram to be read 
publicly. How did you expect it to influence that body? A. There 
were two ways in which Dr. Mack could have insisted on the infor- 
mation communicated to him in my telegram: in his conversation 
with members of the Synod, and also as a corresponding member of 
the Synod. That is my statement of my intention. I meant Dr. 
Mack to do all that he could do, but had no design to have the tele- 
gram published, and was surprised when it was read. 

Q. Was Dr. Mack present at the meeting of the Synod of South 
Carolina at Greenville? A. Yes. 

Q. Did Dr. Mack know what the action of the Synod of South 
Carolina was ? A. He was there ; he must have known. 

Q. Did your telegram in any way increase that knowledge? A. I 
cannot conceive of any way in which it conld have increased it. 
No, sir. 

Q. The telegram served to show your zeal in the matter ? A. Oh ! 
yes, sir ; powerful zeal ! 

Q. Dr. Girardeau, did you write the minority report presented to 
Synod at Greenville? A. I did. 

Q. By whom was it presented? A. By Rev. Mr. Webb, of the 
Committee on Theological Seminaries. 

Q. Did that report require that the inculcation and defence of 
Professor Woodrow's hypothesis be prohibited? A. Yes. 

Q. Was this report adopted? A. No. 

Q. Will you state what was adopted? A. I remember the purport, 
but not the words. 

Q. Will you please state what action was taken by the Synod ? A. 
My recollection is that it was a very short resolution — about in 
these words, Resolved, That the teaching of Dr. Woodrow on the 
subject of Evolution, except in a purely expository manner, be pro- 
hibited in the Columbia Seminary. 

Q. You stated that the teaching was prohibited; are you willing 
to say that now, after the last answer? A. Yes. 

Q. You regard prohibiting, and prohibiting except , in a certain 
manner, as equivalent? A. Of course, there is a difference as to, de- 
gree and as to the manner. The Synod of South Carolina did not 



5G6 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



prohibit Dr. Woodrow teaching in an expository manner, but did 
prohibit his teaching in any other than an expository manner. 

Q. Did you publish in the Columbia Register your dissent from 
my teaching? A. I did. I preached a sermon on Elijah at Carmel 
in a Columbia church, and some one in a paper mentioned that I had 
attacked Dr. Woodrow in that sermon. I denied it 'and expressed 
my dissent in the Columbia Register, and if I had intended to at- 
tack Dr. Woodrow, would have done so openly, and not in a sneaking 
way. 

Q. This was the first public expression of your dissent that could 
have reached Dr. Woodrow's ears? A. I think so. 

Q. You have forgotten, Dr. Girardeau, that your interview with 
me was some time after this publication in the Register? A. I have. 

Q. You stated as a matter of some importance that your first ex- 
pressed dissent from my views was made to me privately, before you 
would feel at liberty to express such dissent publicly? A. I do not 
remember as to the time — the relation between the times of the 
publication and my interview with Dr. Woodrow. I said to him 
that I would not oppose his views without first acquainting him 
with the posture of my own mind. 

Q. Do you regard an expression of non-concurrence or dissent in a 
secular paper as opposition? A. Non-concurrence does not amount 
to a determination to oppose. I wished the community of Columbia 
to know that I did not agree with Dr. Woodrow. 

Q. You remarked a while ago that until I delivered my address on 
evolution, you had never heard the combination of words, "organic 
dust." Did you hear it then? A. I do not remember whether those 
words were used in your address or not. They were freely used 
subsequently to Dr. Woodrow's address. 

Q. In regard to "organic dust," did you ever hear the term "anti- 
Woodrow" before you used it ? A.I do not know that I ever did. 

Q. Have you said that Dr. Woodrow's "hypothesis is that Adam 
as to his body was born of animal parents"? A. Yes. 

Q. What authority had you for that statement ? A. The authority 
I had was Dr. Woodrow's address before the Alumni, page 17. 

Q. Is there anything in my address referred to that authorizes it? 
A. Yes. Unless there was extraordinary supernatural intervention 
of Almighty God which was not involved in the first statement, it 
must be inferred that the body of Adam, like the body of other ani- 
mals, was born. 

Q. Was it your inference and not my statement? A. Yes, a good 
logical inference. 

Q. Has any one a right to attribute opinions to another which are 
only % inferences from that other's statements? A. Yes, decidedly. 
As to the intention of the person who uses the arguments, I have no 



CONTKOVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



567 



right to impute to him what he disowns; but as to the arguments, 
I have a right to use all logical inferences that grow out of them. 

Q. Did you ever say that Dr. Woodrow's hypothesis as to Adam 
is, "that Adam as to his body was born of animal ancestry"? A. 
Yes, either in the address or exposition following; as far as my 
recollection goes, he used the expression charged to him. 

Q. Did Dr. Woodrow ever say that? A. I do not know that he did. 

Q. Did you ever say that Dr. Woodrow's hypothesis was that "the 
existence of Adam's body preceded for years the formation of Eve's 
body"? A. Yes, as far as I recollect. 

Q. Did I ever use that expression? A. I do not know, but they 
are good and logical inferences. 

Q. Did Dr. Woodrow ever say anything about the time that 
elapsed between the creation of Adam's body and that of Eve's body? 
A. I do not know that Dr. Woodrow said as to the exact time after 
Adam was created, but he did assert that Adam's body was formed 
before that of Eve, giving the Bible verbiage as to Eve's formation. 

(Signed) J. L. Girardeau. 

(Placed in evidence two speeches by Dr. Girardeau in the Synod 
of South Carolina.) 

The documents referred to in the indictment were here submitted 
as evidence. 

Question by Rev. J. B. Morton to Dr. Girardeau : Did you say 
that Dr. Woodrow's teachings were not heresy? A. I did. In the 
Confession all error that is contrary to the standards is treated in 
one place as heresy — so called in that place. But that is not the 
ordinary theological sense of the word heresy, which signifies error, 
implying a high degree of pravity. But in the Book of Discipline a 
distinction is drawn between errors — some being treated as of a high 
degree of pravity and others as not; and it must be inquired 
whether an error is of a serious character and threatens injury to 
the cause of Christ. 

Question by Dr. Woodrow: Give a formal definition of heresy. A. 
Heresy is a view which involves a serious departure from the funda- 
mental elements of the gospel or from the vital teachings of the 
Calvinistic theology. 

Q. Was it heresy as now defined that you said you did not believe 
Dr. Woodrow was guilty of? A. It was. ^ 

Question by Dr. Jones: You said that you believed at the time 
of the Synod of South Carolina Dr. Woodrow's views were not 
heresy. Do you think so now? 

( Ruled out of order by Moderator, chiefly on the ground that Dr. 
Girardeau was not a member of the court, and this would be bring- 



568 



MY LIFE AND TIMES, 



ing an outside influence to bear upon the body. An appeal taken 
and not sustained. Question not answered.) 

(Signed) J. L. Girardeau. 

Evidence for the Defence. 

Dr. Woodrow called as witness for the defence the prosecutor, the 
Rev. Dr. Adams. 

Dr. William Adams sworn : 

Q. You prepared this indictment? A. Yes. 

Q. Had you assistance? I had. 

Q. What ? A. I had a young gentleman who acted as my amanu- 
ensis. 1 corresponded with several brethren on the subject, and I 
wrote my indictment from the best information I could get from 
friends of the church of God, and from law books and the standards 
of the church. And I regard this question as an insult. 

Q. You refer to law books. In ascertaining what is an offence, did 
you employ the Book of Church Order as adopted by the Presby- 
terian Church in the United States, or the Book of Discipline of the 
Presbyterian Church in the United States of America ? A. If the 
defendant will examine the indictment, he will see what books they 
are to which I have referred ; inasmuch as the book is there quoted 
and chapters and sections referred to. 

Q. Where in the Book of Church Order do you find the promulga- 
tion of opinions which are of a dangerous tendency, and which are 
calculated to unsettle the mind of the church respecting the accu- 
racy and authority of the Holy Scriptures as the infallible rule of 
faith, described as an offence? A. The question embodies a consider- 
able argument. I have the answer in my argument, and I decline to 
answer now. The object of the defendant was to perforate my 
speech. 

Q. Is anything to be considered by any court as an offence or ad- 
mitted as matter of accusation, which cannot be proved to be such 
from Scripture as interpreted in the standards? A. I decline to 
answer. You will find the answer in the Book of Church Order 
Presbyterian Church United States. 

Q. Do you say that it was not under a recollection of the Book of 
Discipline of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of 
America ? A. I do. 

Q. What is your object in this prosecution? A. My object is cer- 
tainly not to kill you either ecclesiastically or socially or physically, 
not for one moment to draw any great gulf between you and your 
brethren either of presbytery or church. It is that this court of the 
Lord Jesus Christ, responsible to the church at large, and for the 
purity of whose doctrines it is now responsible before God, shall, 
if it find that your teachings with respect to the body of Adam are 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



56<J 



contrary to the word of God as interpreted in the standards of the 
church, admonish you to cease from those teachings in any place, 
shape or form. 

Q. If I had resigned my professorship in the Seminary last Jan- 
uary, would you have instituted this prosecution? A. It is very 
doubtful. For this reason: When I was before the Synod of 
Georgia defending the action of the Presbytery of Augusta, I made 
use of these words, "It is far better that opinions of this nature, 
though deemed erroneous, should be left to their operation upon the 
mind of the individual who entertains them, than that they should 
be elevated to an adventitious importance by being made the subject 
of judicial investigation. I know it is a little hard upon the authors 
of them thus to treat them with neglect, but it is invariably the 
most effective way to cure themselves and to kill their crotchets. 
The fact that the teaching of them has been prohibited in the 
Seminary constitutes no ground of claim for their examination by 
presbytery." That was all the length to which I was willing to go. 
The defendant persists in remaining in the Seminary, demanding 
all along this trial, and these repeated demands and refusal to 
abandon his chair had much to do with the prosecution of this case 
before the presbytery. Had he retired from the Seminary, I for one 
was willing that he should pursue these investigations to the ut- 
most. But instead of that he continued in the capacity of an official 
teacher of our church, and I had no other alternative from my sense 
of duty to the church of God, and to the institution of which I was 
a director, but to bring him before this court. 

Q. Did you ever use words to this effect, '"Dr. Woodrow remains 
intact, and unless some good angel persuades him to tender his 
resignation, his case will come before the Augusta Presbytery. That 
body will meet in this city early in next year, and steps will be taken 
for his trial upon the merits of the question"? A. I did, my 
prophetic soul! 

Q. Then you instituted the prosecution because that good angel 
did not speak? A. I entered upon this prosecution not only because 
of all Dr. Woodrow had said and taught in the addresses before the 
Alumni and the Synod of South Carolina, but because of Dr. Wood- 
row's insisting that he must have a trial before he would surrender 
his professorship, and because, up to the time of the institution of 
this process, Dr. Woodrow was flooding the country with his views. 
My feelings deepened as the agitation went on. 

Q. Did Dr. Woodrow ever say that he either would or would not 
resign without or with a trial? A. Every member of the Board of 
Directors of the Seminary understood that to be his position. I 
think the church did at large — I so understood it. 

Q. What was the basis of that understanding? A. Dr. Woodrow 



570 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



wrote us a letter in which he declared that his honor was at stake, 
and that for his honor he could not resign. Dr. Woodrow looked in 
my face at the presbytery in Augusta and said, "I am teaching it, I 
have taught it, I have four thousand constituents to whom I am 
teaching it, and you are responsible for it until you give me a trial." 

Q. Had that remark of mine any reference to the Seminary, and 
did it give you reason to think that when tried I would change my 
relation to the Seminary? A. I understood it to embrace the entire 
outcome of your mind on that subject in the city of Columbia, in 
the publications of which you are the editor, in the classes in the 
college where you are a professor. I understand now that if you are 
tried by your presbytery, and it finds your teachings are what they 
are declared to be in the indictment, there is conscience enough in 
the church of God to stop your teachings. 

Q. Did you offer Dr. Woodrow that you would withdraw this 
prosecution if he would cease these teachings? A. I did; and if 
there is one event in my ministerial history of which I am glad, it is 
that. After the Assembly had interpreted your teachings as con- 
trary to the word of God, I then came to you as a brother and said 
(Letter * in evidence read) . 

Q. What is an offence? A. Book of Church Order, consecutive 
Par. 152, first sentence. 



* Augusta, Ga., May 27 th. 

Rev. Dr. James Woodrow : 

Dear Brother, — Will yon allow me to address you this letter upon 
the issue still between us? In your closing remarks before the Assem- 
bly yesterday, you used the following words : "I have always shown 
a loyal adherence to every deliverance of this church," and you imme- 
diately added this sentence : "The settled policy of our church is that 
an in thesi deliverance has no legal force, and while it is to be obeyed 
unless in opposition to the constitution of our church and the word of 
God, it is not to be obeyed by any one who believes it is in opposition 
to these. To him who so believes it is totally devoid of any sem- 
blance of authority." This, of course, leaves everything uncertain 
with regard both to your and my attitude in the controvery involved 
in the charges which I have preferred against you. I had hoped, and 
still hope, the deliverance of the Assembly will induce you to give an 
assurance that you will not further advocate your views on evolution 
in any way before the church or the public, and that you will with- 
draw at once from the Seminary ; and lest the impending trial before 
our Presbytery should embarrass any such declaration, I was ready 
to say to you, that if you felt inclined to give the Assembly such an 
assurance, I would withdraw the charge against you. I do not, of 
course, ask you to do this, although it would not be improper for me 
not only to ask it, but, in the interest of our beloved church, to be- 
seech it ; but what I do say is, that if you are now inclined to give 
this assurance, I shall at once declare the charges withdrawn. 
Very sincerely yours, 

W. Adams. 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



571 



Q. Did you make that offer in view of a prospective change in my 
principles, or is it not confined to my teaching? A. I have been all 
along an advocate for Dr. Woodrow to prosecute his investigations. 
I am not here to choke Dr. Woodrow's convictions down his own 
throat, but I am here to insist that so long as he subscribes to the 
standards of our church, he shall not officially teach anything con- 
trary to the word of God as interpreted in those standards. 

Q. Do I understand you, then, that you are willing that a fellow- 
presbyter shall hold principles contrary to the word of God? A. 
"No, sir, not if they are fundamental principles. I am not willing 
that an official teacher shall hold them when he swears to believe in 
something else. 

Q. Do you regard the accused here as having sworn to believe in 
something else? A. That I will develop in my argument. 

Q. You are willing, without instituting prosecution against him, 
that a fellow-presbyter should hold views which are inconsistent 
with the peace and purity of the church, and the honor and majesty 
of the Lord Jesus Christ as King and Head thereof? A. No, when 
that man swears that he will not hold those views. I believe a man 
may hold views which are not in harmony with our standards or 
with the word of God, provided he does not declare those views as a 
public teacher. Take the millennium and other such minor ques- 
tions. But I hold that no official teacher in our church has a right 
to hold and teach any views diametrically contrary to our stan- 
dards. 

Q. Under which of those heads do you class my views? A. Under 
the latter and that against the peace of the church. 

Q. Would I have authority to act as an official teacher in the 
church if I withdrew from the Seminary? A. Yes. 

Q. You would then be willing that I should have authority to 
preach and hold those doctrines at the same time? A. Yes. 

Q. Would you regard that as consistent with duty? A. Yes, I 
do not consider it my duty to bring any brother before a presbytery 
for whatever private opinions he held in his own mind or heart. 

Q. Suppose I was an atheist at heart and did not teach it, and 
you should come to know it, would you regard it as your duty to 
prosecute me? A. If you said nothing about it and were merely 
holding these views and prosecuting your studies, I could not bring 
prosecution against you because I would know nothing about them. 

Q. Suppose I had been teaching atheism and you had instituted 
process against me, would you offer, under any circumstances, to 
withdraw that prosecution if I would promise to remain silent? A. 
Certainly not. But there is no analogy between the two cases. 
That is fundamental. This I have never so regarded. 

Q. So then my offence is not sufficiently grave as that the mere 



572 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



holding of my views would constitute a ground for judicial process? 
A. If the defendant held these views to himself without teaching 
them in any shape or form, I should not feel called upon to institute 
process against him ; but if he held the views of an atheist, and I 
could bring those views home to him, then I should be bound to 
prosecute him. In the one case, as is now before us, I look for ad- 
monition of the defendant; in the other case, I should look for ex- 
communication. Dr. Woodrow not only holds, but teaches his views. 
The holding and teaching are distinct parts of my charge against 
him. If Dr. Woodrow only held them, then the question would be 
relevant to the case; but they are both held and taught. 

Q. Is the holding of such views consistent with the purity of the 
church? A. I doubt whether it is. Holding them as you hold 
them now is hurtful to the purity of the church. 

Q. Regarding the holding of these views as hurtful to the purity 
of the church, you were willing to withdraw the prosecution, were 
you? A. Yes, provided the defendant would give the assurance that 
he would not teach them in any form and would step down from his 
position as an official teacher. 

Q. Define heresy. A. All error is heresy. The Baptist is a heretic 
from a Presbyterian standpoint; so the Methodists are heretics. 
They teach doctrines contrary to the word of God as interpreted in 
the standards of our church. But the heresy which we would regard 
in an instance of this sort must amount to a direct contradiction of 
some fundamental truth of our religion, such as the divinity of 
Christ or other vital doctrines. 

Q. You have said that Dr. Woodrow is not guilty of heresy, have 
you not? A. I have, in the sense of violating a fundamental doc- 
trine of the Scriptures. 

Q. In what sense did you say Dr. Woodrow is guilty of heresy ? 
A. Book of Church Order, consecutive Par. 200. I draw a distinction 
between the violation of a fundamental truth and the teaching of 
a doctrine on an unessential subject to salvation contrary to God's 
word as interpreted in the standards. The one I regard as heresy, 
the other as error. (The point of order was here raised that this 
question related to Dr. Adams's opinion, and should not be answered. 
The Moderator ruled that, as this class of questions had been 
allowed to go on so long, this would also be allowed.) 

Q. Then my error does not strike at the vitals of religion? (With- 
drawn.) 

Q. Have you ever said that my "views placed the Bible on trial. 
Presbyterian Church on trial, and struck at the very vitals of re- 
vealed religion"? A. Yes. 

Q. But that is not the higher heresy? A. It is not. 

(Signed) Wm. Adams. 



CONTROVERSIES OE SCIENCE. 



573 



Dr. Adams cross-examines himself. 

Q. Why did you say that at the Synod of Georgia and then after- 
wards modify your views on the subject? A. I was then in the 
presence of a man who, for the first time, had come before our Synod 
to advocate and claim the right to teach and hold the views which 
he had advanced in his addresses before the Alumni Association and 
the Synod of South Carolina. I was also in the presence of a con- 
siderable body of brethren who appeared to be in sympathy with 
him and to sustain him in the Synod. This man was a professor in 
one of our sacred schools of learning, and among those who sympa- 
thized with him was another professor in the same institution. I 
saw then, what I believe I see now, that if that doctrine were 
allowed by the Synods controlling — or one of the Synods— the pro- 
fessor and the institution, the very Synod of which he was a mem- 
ber — to be taught in its name and by its authority to the ministry 
coming into the church, that it would not only strike at the very 
vitals of our church, but that our church must necessarily crumble 
to pieces under such teaching. But when the Synod repudiated the 
views that were then advocated, and appointed and authorized its 
representatives as directors of the Columbia Seminary to take what- 
ever steps were necessary to stop this teaching, my views then, as to 
the effects of the teaching, were considerably modified. When, there- 
fore, I had to come officially to consider whether the views held 
by the defendant could be fairly classified under the head of gross, 
flagrant heresy, I could not so designate them. And after this 
decision of the Synod, I was unwilling to arraign the brother before 
a court of the church under this charge. 

Q. Will you more fully explain wha f you mean in your answer to 
the questions as to the definition of heresy? A. If the defendant 
were to affirm, to hold, and to teach that the proper mode of baptism 
is that of immersion, and only adult believers are proper subjects 
for that ordinance, he would be liable to an indictment, under these 
Rules of Discipline, for teaching and promulgating an opinion and 
doctrine contrary to the word of God as interpreted in the standards 
of this church. Technically I admit that our Book would hold him 
under the charge of heresy, inasmuch as it would be an offence 
which would be a proper object of judicial process. But no man, 
living or dead, could induce me to speak of him as a heretic. 1 
would still hold that he was in error, and such error as would in- 
volve judicial censure. But if he came before this presbytery under 
the charges of an atheist or a Socinian, if he denied the atonement 
of Christ or repudiated any other saving truth of the Christian 
religion, then I would not hesitate to speak of him as a heretic. I 
admit that the Book would hold him for both offences under the 
same charge of heresy ; but I hold that the Book itself makes a clear 



574 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



distinction between these two kinds of heresy, inasmuch as it 
makes a distinction between the kinds of censure which the court 
has to pronounce upon the person found guilty under these rules. 
I think that these degrees of censures are deposition, suspension and 
admonition; and, therefore, while I fully admit that the definition 
of the Book and my general way of talking and thinking on this 
subject are different, and as I cannot hold any man as a heretic who 
does not repudiate some saving truth of our religion, yet I am 
conscious that the Book does itself technically so regard him. 

(Signed) Wm. Adams. 

For the Prosecution.* 

Dr. Adams, in behalf of the prosecution, said he was 
glad that at last this much-agitated matter was to be sub- 
mitted to calm judicial investigation, or what so far had 
been such. He appealed for the dignity of the secular 
courts and the mechanical and professional forbearance of 
lawyers. 

x^O question of moral character was at stake. The only 
point was the correctness of the views held and taught by 
Dr. J ames Woodrow. Were they in accord with the scrip- 
tures as interpreted by the Presbyterian Church stan- 
dards ? Let us divest the question of personal feeling, 
said he. There is no room for prejudice. Let the ques- 
tion come up on its merits — the law and the evidence. 
This is no time for sympathy or partisanship. Let each 
man go into his own conscience and ask before God 
what is the truth in this case. This is one of the most im- 
portant cases that ever came into the courts of this church. 
We are friends to Christ — to his church and his truth — 
and human friendship cannot stand before these. We 
stand before a crisis in the church. Fidelity to the de- 
fendant, our own convictions and consciences, to the 
church of Christ — which church is the prosecutor, and 
not the humble speaker — demands impartial judgment. 
We are not called on to try Dr. Woodrow on the question 
of evolution, either as an abstract principle or scientific 
hypothesis. Evolution is the road along which he has 

* This outline of Dr. Adams's argument is copied from the Au- 
gusta Chronicle. The argument, at least the greater part of it, was 
written, and was read to the presbytery. 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



575 



come, and which has landed him where he is. Hence we 
have only to do with evolution as it relates to the charge 
of teaching opinions and doctrines against scripture as 
interpreted by the standards of this church. 

First charge — Teaching and promulgating doctrines 
contrary to scripture as interpreted by the standards. Dr. 
Adams read from the alumni address delivered by Dr. 
Woodrow in May, 1884, in Columbia. He read Dr. 
Woodrow's definition of evolution. 

Then he proceeded to set forth what he conceived to be 
the dangerous errors which must flow from Dr. Wood- 
row's hypothesis. 

This, then, is the road along which Dr. Woodrow has 
travelled. Now, let us see where it has left him. He be- 
lieves that God's word teaches that man's soul was im- 
mediately created — his spiritual nature came into ex- 
istence by a fiat of the Almighty. Eve was not derived 
from ancestry, but was miraculously formed by the Al- 
mighty. As Adam's body was derived, the higher from 
the lower, then Adam, so far as he is an animal, must have 
been formed as other animals, by evolution. There is no 
suggestion of divine supernatural intervention. Had he 
been combating the interposition of God, he could not 
have stated his argument more clearly, more strongly. 
That is in fact what he does state. Then Adam is formed 
as other animals. The spiritual nature had especial 
divine intervention to create it, he says. Dr. Woodrow 
makes distinct recognition of divine intervention. On 
this point, Dr. Woodrow had said he did not know what 
difference obtained in the birth of a horse and of Adam's 
body — created from ancestors unlike themselves and 
passing through the same kind of changes. God made the 
form from which each sprang to pass through similar 
changes. Dr. Woodrow knew of nothing, he said, in the 
Bible to contradict this view. Then, just as the horse 
came, Adam came. You must say to-day, is this to be a 
doctrine in your church, founded on the scriptures, as in- 
terpreted by the standards ? Are you prepared to make 
this admission ? 

"For myself," said Dr. Adams, "I am not afraid to 
trust the answer to this question to you." 



576 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



Dr. Adams said that Dr. Woodrow had used the terms 
"probably true/' a does it not seem probable/' etc. "Does 
this mean that the Doctor is trying to bore a loophole in 
an emergency like the present, or that he is not certain 
about his own views % I could wish that the gentleman 
had had greater courage of his convictions. It is just this 
sort of statement that involves serious and fatal conse- 
quences the world over. Insinuation is dangerous and 
far reaching. All this, too, is to say that the standards of 
the church are "probably false." If he has gone this 
length in carrying a doctrine which he believes to be only 
"probably true/' he has a tremendous responsibility. But 
we are led to believe that he has studied the whole ques- 
tion, and believes in it. Has this change in his views of 
late years been made merely to a peradventure ? He was 
a believer, however, that the reasons against the theory of 
evolution are of little weight, and that there are many 
good grounds to believe that it is true. We are to accept 
his authorities cited as an evidence of the fixedness of his 
views. He first confronted the question as an opponent, 
then as a doubter, and finally a disciple. 

"The question is not whether or not evolution is taught 
in the Bible, but what do the scriptures, as interpreted 
by our standards, speak of the creation of Adam's body ? 
The scriptures and standards both speak of this subject. 
To say that they are silent is foolish and misleading. The 
intention of this is insulting to the ministry. The Bible 
and the Confession of Faith both give accounts of the im- 
mediate making of man. The subject cannot be expunged 
from the word of God. I should hesitate to embrace any 
doctrine not found, as Dr. Woodrow says his is not, in the 
word of God. When it is on a question of my relations to 
God, I will not accept a doctrine not spoken of in the 
scriptures." 

The defendant had received the standards and Cate- 
chisms of the church, and had sworn to adopt them as 
being the combined wisdom of the church. Having sworn 
to do this, he could not exercise the right of private judg- 
ment to teach any other doctrine. "You may smile, my 
brother, but this is true. It may be a bad doctrine, but 
when my church says one thing I cannot say another. 



CONTROVEKSIES OF SCIENCE. 



577 



This lies at the very foundation of the law and the church. 
Dr. Woodrow is bound by the story of creation in the 
standards, just as by other rules. There are but two ways 
of remedy. Either have the standards altered, or else 
step down and out ! Xeither of these has been done." 

Dr. Adams read rules of interpretation. It is not 
needed to interpret what is not obscure already. The lan- 
guage of the Confession of Faith on creation was plain, 
and led to nothing absurd. This said that man's body was 
-created "after all other creatures." Dr. Woodrow' s the- 
ory was that it was being created along with the other 
■creatures all the time. 

The standards are also clear as to the fact of the crea- 
tion. "How did God create man ?" Was it by slow pro- 
cess of evolution from the body of an insect or an animal ? 
The standards were not silent as to the mode. If they 
had not known how the body was made, they would have 
said so. But the standards are clear and explicit. Thank 
God for the answer. 

"He created man, male and female, after all other crea- 
tures" — that was when he did it. iSTow, how did he do it ? 
He formed the body of the man of the dust of the ground 
and the woman out of the rib of the man. He endowed 
them with souls and made them in "his own image." Xot 
out of one animal or two animals, but out of the dust of 
the ground in his own image. 

"Why interpret what does not need interpretation ? I 
have sometimes thought that this emergency must have 
been foreseen, and this definition was put in exactly to 
meet this theory. 

"The church has already accepted this interpretation. 
If the plain meaning of the law is stated, the courts have 
no right to put their interpretation on it. The intention 
•of the law-maker must be taken into consideration when 
•construing an act — not the theory of scientific investiga- 
tion, but the intendment of the law-maker. Did the West- 
minster divines mean to say that the body of man was 
•evolved ? Did they have any such conception ? Did they 
mean that we could put any construction we wanted on 
this law? Until recently the idea of evolution never 
dawned on the student of the Bible. Xo new meaning 



578 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



should be put into the standards by any stretch of the 
fancy or subtlety of argument. 

"Dr. Woodrow professes to have faith in the absolute 
inerrancy of the word of God. How does this hold him 
in the account of the creation ? He indulges in nebulous 
language in defining 'dust of the ground.' He allows the 
sharp definitions of the term to disappear. If 'dust' 
means what we believe it to mean, and not what he be- 
lieves it to mean, his whole structure falls to the ground. 
He builds his new meaning of dust on the curse of the 
serpent which was condemned to eat dust all his days. As 
the food of the serpent was flesh and blood and bone, 
therefore the body of man was made of flesh and blood 
and bone. But the serpent was to go forever on his belly ; 
this proneness of his body was to bring him nearer to his 
food. The defendant should have remembered this point 
when gathering up his dust theory. The sting of the 
curse was that he should eat 'dust of the ground.' If this 
dust meant flesh and blood and bone, it was a sumptuous 
meal for a curse. God did not starve him. 

"The standards of our church admit of no such travesty 
as this. Creation was a sudden and supernatural act of 
God. The deliverance of the Augusta General Assembly 
was no new principle ; but it was an interpretation which 
had been recognized long ago — an honest declaration of 
what the standards meant. The standards were not made 
to enable the Bible to rush into the arms of science. They 
are too staid to encourage this frolicsome lover — this 
spawn of atheism. The Bible forbids the banns. 

"The standards and the defendant do not agree on this 
subject. He adopts the theory of man's descent by modi- 
fication. They say he was created out of dust of the 
ground. Where is the sophism of 'non-contradiction' ?" 

Dr. Adams said this presbytery, if it should acquit Dr. 
Woodrow, must declare the church in error. The highest 
court of the church had but three months ago made its 
declaration. Shall it be said that evolution is to be en- 
dorsed by the Augusta Presbytery ? Your votes will go 
down to posterity. 

Dr. Adams said he considered it an honor to come into 
this historic church with the seal and chart of the Cove- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



579 



nanters before him, and be allowed to stand up for truth 
and for the church. He had not spoken with personal 
bitterness. His Irish nature did not admit of malice. 
There was in his heart no resentment towards his breth- 
ren. 

He spoke for two hours and forty minutes, and made 
a powerful effort. 

For the Defence.* 

Dr. Woodrow began by saying that he had long been 
earnestly desiring the coming of this day. For more than 
two years, charges of heresy, of unscriptural teaching, had 
been made against him in various regions by great num- 
bers of persons ; charges which he pronounced slanders, 
as long as they were made by those who did not attempt 
to prove them before the proper tribunal. Until now 
these charges have been constantly reiterated by those 
who had not the courage to formulate them and endeavor 
to establish their truth in a church court according to law 
— where the accused might meet his accusers face to face. 
Therefore, whatever was the object of this prosecution, 
even though it might be one with which this presbytery 
had nothing to do, he sincerely thanked his prosecutor for 
having instituted it. 

He had been glad that at the outset his prosecutor had 
strenuously urged that the case should be tried according 
to the law and the evidence — the law being, of course, the 
scriptures as interpreted in our standards. But he was 
disappointed that he did not adhere to this righteous 
principle, but in the close of his argument had insisted 
that the presbytery should be controlled in its judgment, 
not by the law, but by a deliverance of the Augusta Gen- 
eral Assembly. He trusted that no one would thus be led 
away from right and justice. 

He then proceeded to examine the second part of the 

* Professor Woodrow had no notes of his remarks ; and, therefore, 
in this outline, it is impossible to reproduce his words. Many 
things which he said are doubtless omitted, and probably there are 
some additions; but this report is thought to be a fair representa- 
tion of the substance and general tenor of his speech. 



580 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



indictment, which charged him with teaching "opinions 
which are of a dangerous tendency, and which are calcu- 
lated to unsettle the mind of the church," because these 
opinions are said to be contrary to what is "universally 
understood by the church to be the declaration of the word 
of God." He showed that, under our Rules of Discipline, 
such an indictment could not stand; for according to 
these "nothing ought to be considered by any court as an 
offence, or admitted as a matter of accusation, which can- 
not be proved to be such from scripture, as interpreted in 
these standards." Under the Northern Presbyterian Dis- 
cipline, indeed, it is also that "which, if it be not in its 
own nature sinful, may tempt others to sin, or mar their 
spiritual edification." And, further, the test by which 
anything is proved to be an offence is not solely the scrip- 
ture as interpreted in the standards, but "the regulations 
and practice of the church" — that which is "universally 
understood by the church." But happily we have no such 
law. But for the prosecutor's denial, it would have been 
reasonable to continue to believe that he had framed this 
part of the indictment according to the Northern Disci- 
pline and not according to ours. 

He never had sworn and never would swear that he 
would be guided by what the church "universally under- 
stood," nor had they. It was by the Bible and the stan- 
dards alone that they could try him, or that he would con- 
sent to be tried. 

It was at one time "universally understood" by the 
church, even at the time when the Westminster Assembly 
was sitting and long after, that the sun moved, and that 
the earth stood still; yet he might hold the contrary doc- 
trine, provided it did not contradict the Bible. His 
studies largely lay outside those with which the church is 
directly concerned ; and he might, and no doubt did, hold 
many beliefs at variance with what was "universally 
understood" by the church; but he was guilty of no of- 
fence unless he held beliefs contrary to the Bible as inter- 
preted in the standards. 

"As to the special change of view about which so much 
is said, let me state what it was. Twenty-six or twenty- 
seven years ago, when the doctrine of evolution was 



CONTROVERSIES OE SCIENCE. 



581 



brought to the attention of the thinking world in a more 
striking way than it had ever been before, in common 
with most students of natural history, I refused to accept 
it as true. After some years, I reached the conclusion 
that, with certain limitations, its truth was not a matter 
that in any way concerned the believer in the Bible, for, 
with these limitations, it did not in the least contradict 
the teachings of the Bible. This conclusion was reached 
while I still thought that the preponderance of evidence 
was greatly against its truth. I continued my study of 
various departments of nature as industriously as I 
could; and in the spring of 1884, when preparing an 
address on evolution, I carefully summed up the evidence 
I had been accumulating all the previous years, and I was 
forced to come to the conclusion that the preponderance 
of the evidence is now in favor of its truth. Just as soon 
as I formed this opinion, I published it to the church and 
to the world. Every day's study since has increased the 
preponderance of the evidence in favor of evolution as 
God's plan of creation, in my opinion ; while I am still 
far from thinking that it is demonstrated to be true. I 
am more and more convinced of the truth of the views 
set forth in my address and the other articles enumerated 
in the indictment, and believe that in proportion as they 
are fairly and intelligently studied will they be accepted 
as not inconsistent with the Bible as interpreted in our 
standards. It was not necessary to introduce witnesses to 
prove that I am the author of these addresses and edi- 
torial articles. I have no desire to repudiate my own 
children — they are too dear to me. 

"But I now ask you to examine the testimony to which 
you have listened, and consider its bearing on the case. 
Remember that the question you are called on to decide is, 
are the opinions and doctrines which I have taught in 
conflict with the sacrecl scriptures as interpreted in our 
standards ? Now, look at the evidence relied on to prove 
that they are. Dr. Girardeau tells you that when he 
heard my address, he was surprised, gratified, and subse- 
quently that he was convinced it would agitate the church, 
that he must oppose, and, 'in accordance with a resistless 
sentiment of honor, resign his professorship.' Well, 



582 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



what is there in all this to show that there was anything 
in the address contrary to the scriptures ? And what has 
all he said as to my inaugural address to do with the 
question of my guilt % Or that he had never before heard 
the expression 'organic dust' ? Or that I had not been 
able to affect the opinions of my students ? Or that the 
origin of the doctrine of evolution is philosophical and 
not the result of Christian research I Or even that it has 
been used by the majority of those who hold it for infidel 
purposes % Admit all this to be true, how does it prove or 
in any way affect the question of my guilt X In view of 
the utter worthlessness of this testimony, I am suprised 
that the prosecutor should have thought it worth while to 
brine; this witness all the way from the middle of South 
Carolina during this extremely hot weather simply to 
give it. I cannot understand it. Can it be that there 
were additional objects I Is it possible that he brought 
him in the guise of a witness to assist in the prosecution, 
or to operate as the witness tells you he desired and ex- 
pected his fellow- worker to do at the Georgia Synod in 
Marietta ? It surely cannot have been solely to give the 
testimony to which you have listened. 

"But if you suppose that the testimony of this witness 
raises a presumption that I must be guilty of something, 
I ask you to look at it more closely, and see how plainly 
the bias of the witness against the accused is shown, and 
how seriously, though unintentionally of course, this af- 
fects the value of his testimony. The answers of the 
witness during the cross-examination show you his zeal — 
his 'powerful zeal' — in striving to secure my condemna- 
tion. And you saw how it affected both his memory and 
his judgment. He told you that, as my colleague, he 
could not oppose my view, even privately, without first 
apprising me of the convictions of his own mind, and 
accordingly he had come to me personally and acquainted 
me with the posture of his mind — forgetting that he had 
already, in a secular paper in Columbia, published to the 
world his opposition to his colleague's views. Then his 
judgment is so affected by his zeal that he tells you that 
my teaching in the Seminary on the subject of evolution 
was prohibited ; when in fact the teaching was not pro- 



COXTKOVEKSIES OF SCIENCE. 



583 



hibited, but merely was disapproved, except in a purely 
expository manner — the only manner in which I ever had 
taught being purely expository. Then he could not re- 
member that I had said at synod that my views had 
undergone a change; but he remembered I gave an ac- 
count of a visit to Europe. Yet at that meeting he heard 
a letter from me read by Mr. W. A. Clark, in which I 
distinctly stated the change; and since then that letter 
has been published in a journal which he has told you he 
receives. He could remember nothing of that, but he 
remembered that I gave an account of a visit to Europe — 
which had nothing whatever to do with the matter in 
hand. 

"'Tie has told you that evolution has been used for 
infidel purposes, but did not know that my hypothesis had 
been so used. Why then did he say anything about it, 
unless it was with the intention of casting on me the 
odium which attaches to those who hold doctrines entirely 
different from mine ? But suppose the doctrine did 
originate with infidels. Does that prove it to be false and 
contrary to scripture ? Is chemistry to be condemned if 
Lavoisier was an infidel ? Is democracy to be scorned 
because Jefferson was an infidel ? 

"But Dr. Girardeau tells you that he has no idea that it 
originated in Christian research. He is certainly right in 
that statement. How could it have so originated ? Chris- 
tian research occupies itself with the Bible, with investi- 
gating the infinitely important truth which it contains. 
But evolution, as we are now concerned with it, is a doc- 
trine relating to natural history. How could it occur to 
any one that it could be otherwise ? Everybody knows 
that. Surely it was not necessary to bring this 'expert' 
so far, in hot weather, to prove it. But what then ? Be- 
cause it did not originate in Christian research, is it 
thereby proved to be false ? Did astronomy originate in 
Christian research ? Or geology ? Or any doctrine in 
physics, or chemistry ? Or any other doctrine in natural 
history ? 

"But further examine Dr. Girardeau's statement that 
'the doctrine of evolution has been used for infidel pur- 
poses by the majority of those who hold it.' Xow, how 



584 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



does he know that % As he has told you, his reading in 
science is limited. He could not know it unless all the 
scientific men of the world had been polled with refer- 
ence to this point and the truth thus ascertained. Has he 
ever so polled them ? Has he any evidence that it has 
been done? He has no such evidence; he could have 
none. Therefore, he could not know that what he as- 
serted is true. Yet he has solemnly testified to it as a 
fact, in order to prove my guilt. I am amazed to see any 
one so under the influence of prejudice as to give snch 
testimony." 

Dr. Girardeau here arose. He said he was not a mem- 
ber of this court, and had no right here. But Dr. Wood- 
row had assaulted him, he said; had maintained that he 
was surprised at what Dr. Girardeau had sworn. "I ask," 
said Dr. Girardeau, "that Dr. Woodrow retract that lan- 
guage." 

' Dr. Woodrow: "What did I say?" 

Dr. Girardeau: "I think he charged me with perjury.'* 

Dr. Woodrow: "Most assuredly I did not. I only said 
I was surprised to find Dr. Girardeau so under the influ- 
ence of error as to say that the majority of those who had 
taught evolution did so for. infidel purposes, when he 
could not possibly know it to be true." 

Dr. Girardeau : "If you retract the charge of perjury, I 
have nothing more to say." 

Dr. Woodrow : "I do not retract it, for I did not make 
it. I will assure Dr. Girardeau that I did not charge 
what he supposed I did." 

Dr. Girardeau sat down. 

"I ask now," continued Dr. Woodrow, "if you are go- 
ing to convict me on such testimony as this. I do not 
intend to discuss here the question whether or not the 
doctrine of evolution is true ; for I would regard the 
discussion of a question of pure science as a profanation 
of a court of the Lord Jesus Christ. The sole question 
that can rightly be considered here is, does that doctrine 
contradict the scriptures ? 

"I do not think it necessary to comment at length on 
Dr. Adams's testimony. It speaks for itself. It was 
clearly shown that the prosecutor's object is not the pres- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



585 



byter, but the professor ; and that "if the professor had 
only resigned, the presbyter would never have been dis- 
turbed. So it is not the presbyter who is prosecuting, but 
it is the Seminary director on his own behalf and on be- 
half of those who by correspondence and otherwise aided 
him in this prosecution. But it is needless to review tes- 
timony in which the witness asserts that one holding 
Views which placed the Bible on trial and struck at the 
vitals of revealed religion 7 is not guilty of holding that 
which Violates a fundamental doctrine of the scriptures.' 
After the answers in the direct examination, it was 
hardly necessary for him to say, when he was cross- 
examining himself, that he 'fully admitted that the defi- 
nition of the Book and his general way of talking and 
thinking on this subject are different.' 

''Coming now to the prosecutor's argument, I may say 
that it is hardly worth my while to reply to it, for it was 
based on a total misconception of my teachings. He has, 
in a singularly grotesque way, misapprehended my views. 
It would be very unsafe for the presbytery to base any 
action on the interpretation of those views given by the 
prosecutor. For example, he reads from my address 
(page 15) to prove to you that I hold that the Bible 
teaches evolution. He overlooks the fact that I begin the 
paragraph by saying that f if thai which is perhaps the 
most commonly received interpretation of the biblical 
record is correct,' then that is the case. But it must be 
apparent to every reader of the address that I do not be- 
lieve that interpretation to be correct. And I have said 
over and over in the address, in many forms, and even in 
some of the passages which Dr. Adams read to you, that 
I believe 'that the scriptures are almost certainly silent on 
the subject.' Hence this mistake of the prosecutor is in- 
excusable. 

"Again, he makes the amusing and amazing mistake 
of regarding certain statements of fact in the address as 
parts of my anti-scriptural teaching. He so understands, 
for example, what I say on page 23 : 'We cannot go back 
to the beginning, but we can go a long way. The outline 
thus obtained shows us that all the earlier organic beings 
in existence, through an immense period, as proved by an 



586 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



immense thickness of layers resting on each other, were 
of lower forms, with not one as high or of as complex an 
organization as the fish. Then the fish appeared, and 
remained for a long time the highest being on the earth. 
Then followed at long intervals the amphibian, or frog- 
like animal, the reptile, the lowest mammalian, then grad- 
ually the higher and higher, until at length appeared man, 
the head and crown of creation.' Xow, is it possible that 
Dr. Adams, or any person even slightly acquainted with 
these subjects, does not know that I am there stating a 
familiarly known fact ? 

"So he quoted to yon as another part of my hypothetical 
teaching the following from page 25 : ' While it cannot be 
said that the human embryo is at one period an inverte- 
brate, then a fish, afterwards a reptile, a mammalian 
quadruped, and at last a human being, yet it is true that it 
has at one period the invertebrate structure, then suc- 
cessively, in a greater or less number of particulars, the 
structure of the fish, the reptile, and the mammalian 
quadruped. And in many of these particulars the like- 
ness is strikingly close.' Again I ask, is it possible that he 
does not know what is here stated to be a fact % If he does 
not know it, is he capable of discussing the subject \ Or 
is it that he is ashamed of ever having himself been a 
quadruped V 

Mr. Morton: "Will Dr. Woodrow please explain what 
he means by saying that Dr. Adams was once a quad- 
ruped ?" 

Dr. Woodrow: "I mean that man, before birth, passes 
through these intermediary stages." 

Dr. Adams: "Who said I was ashamed?" 

"Now, if Dr. Adams so completely, so laughably, mis- 
understands my address, not being able to distinguish 
between elementary and familiarly known facts and my 
supposed anti-scriptural hypotheses, can it be worth while 
for me to attempt to reply to arguments based on such 
errors ? 

"Then, further, the prosecutor has intimated to you 
that all that I say as to my regarding my hypothesis as 
only 'probably true,' as 'seeming' to be so and so, etc., is 
the result of mere cowardice, and shows that I have not 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



587 



the 'courage of ray convictions' ; that it is a mere trick by 
which I hope to have a way of escape if in danger of being 
convicted of heresy. But he exultantly pointed out that 
he had blocked up that cunningly devised way and had 
cornered me — that every now and then I had forgotten 
myself, and at such times had exposed my true senti- 
ments, showing that I believed firmly in my hypothesis 
as absolutely true, and hence all I said as to 'probable,' 
'seems,' and the like, was a mere sham. And how does 
he prove this cowardice of mine and the sly cunning ? By 
showing that I state as facts, about which there is no 
doubt, the familiar truths quoted above ! — truths which 
he is incapable of distinguishing from the hypothesis of 
evolution ! Again I ask, need I reply to such arguments % 
"As to Dr. Adams's intimation that I ignore the agency 
of God in the creation of the world, of plants and animals, 
and of the body of the first man, I content myself with 
referring to the pamphlets and articles enumerated in the 
indictment ; I am willing to leave it to any fair-minded 
man to say whether there could possibly be a fuller recog- 
nition of God's present power and agency in every change, 
however slight, that takes place in any part of the uni- 
verse, than is to be found in them. But there is a prac- 
tical atheism which fails to see God except in his extra- 
ordinary and supernatural working. And those who are 
under its influence, and who themselves, therefore, fail to 
recognize God's presence in all his ordinary, natural acts, 
instantly charge with a denial of God's presence and 
power those who regard a certain change as the result of 
God's ordinary methods instead of a supernatural inter- 
vention. I believe without difficulty and without hesita- 
tion every statement that God makes in his word as to his 
adopting unusual and supernatural ways of accomplish- 
ing his designs ; but I will always believe that he adopts 
his usual natural methods, except when he in his word 
gives me reason to believe otherwise. 

"'The chief point to be considered in determining my 
guilt or innocence I suppose to be the meaning of God's 
words: 'The Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
ground.' It is contended by those who believe me guilty, 
that dust of the ground means sand, clay, limestone, and 



588 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



the like, in a finely divided state — inorganic matter — and 
that it can mean nothing else ; that to refuse to believe 
that this is certainly the meaning is to disbelieve the word 
of God ; and hence, further, the formation of the body 
from the dust was direct, immediate. I maintain, on the 
other hand, that while this may be the meaning, it is not 
certainly so ; but that while God certainly formed the 
body from the dust of the ground, he may have done so 
indirectly, mediately ; that nothing is here certainly said 
to the contrary ; that is, that God's word does not decide 
the question one way or the other. If in saying this I am 
contradicting the Bible, then I am guilty as charged in 
the indictment ; if I do not thus contradict it, I do not 
contradict it at all, and I am innocent of the charge 
brought against me. I say nothing as to the standards ; 
for they simply repeat the language of the scriptures; 
they do not undertake to interpret it. Hence it is un- 
necessary to say more respecting them. 

"Now let me ask you to accompany me as we examine 
how it pleases God to create the plants and animals with 
which he has covered the earth. You see that he forms 
the plant of earth, air, and water — inorganic matter ; but 
as the elements of the air and the water are found also in 
the earth, you may with equal propriety say he transforms 
the earth into the plant — he forms the plant-world of the 
dust of the ground. You see, further, that he constructs 
the bodies of animals from plants ; the animal feeds on 
the plant directly or indirectly ; so the Lord God is form- 
ing before our eyes all his animals of the dust of the 
ground. What can be more true, then, than the assertion 
you are ready to make, that God has formed and is form- 
ing everything that has life, whether vegetable or animal, 
of the dust of the ground '? Now, is it not possible that it 
is in this sense that God tells us that he formed man of 
the dust of the ground ? 

"Before you decide that this cannot be, remember that 
it is extremely common for God, from the beginning to 
the end of his word, to tell us that he does a certain thing, 
mentioning the fact that the thing done is his act, but 
without saying anything, or if anything, very little, as to 
his method of doing it. He speaks of the cause — himself,, 



CONTROVERSIES OE SCIENCE. 



589 



and of the last step — the thing clone ; but in multitudes of 
cases he tells us little or nothing as to the intermediate 
steps. Such information would not be germane to the 
design he has in making known to us his will. Consider 
further the scripture usage of the word dust — numerous 
examples must be familiar to you — and I think that you 
will hesitate long before you decide that it is impossible 
that my suggestion may be true, and that I am certainly 
thereby contradicting God's word. The more I study 
that word, comparing scripture with scripture, the more 
fully convinced I am that what I have said is not contrary 
to it ; that it is impossible to assert positively that God's 
Spirit would here teach us anything whatever as to 
whether the formation of man's body from the dust of the 
ground was mediate or immediate. 

"You have been told by Dr. Girardeau in his published 
speeches and here on the witness stand that my hypoth- 
esis is that 'Adam as to his body was born of animal par- 
ents :' that 'Adam as to his body was born of animal an- 
cestry;' that 'the existence of Adam's body preceded for 
years the formation of Eve's body.' When he so signally 
failed to find any such statements in my writings, he 
insisted that his statements were good logical inferences 
from what I had written, and therefore that he had a 
right to attribute them to me. 

"Let us test the propriety of this by considering the 
view that God formed man immediately of inorganic mat- 
ter — of sand, clay, limestone, etc., in a finely divided 
state. Having first fixed our attention on the mass from 
which God was about to form man, let us next trace the 
history of the particles composing it, as far as we can. In 
common with all the rest of the matter of the earth, these 
particles were created millions of years ago. Follow 
them back as far as possible, and you will find that at one 
time they constituted parts of rocks more or less like 
granite in widely separated parts of the world ; these ex- 
posed to the weather gradually crumbled to powder ; and 
the loose particles were carried by rills of water down 
into larger streams, and so at length to the ocean. Here 
some were tossed by the tides, others sank into the depths, 
but all after awhile were made to unite with neighboring 



590 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



particles by new combinations into other kinds of solid 
rock. This was heaved from the bed of the ocean, and 
again became part of the dry land. Then some of the 
particles having again become dust, would be transformed 
into plants, then into animals, and then would return to 
dust again, while others would become the sport of the 
winds, whirled high in the air over the mountain top. 
And so, each particle, after an infinite variety of expe- 
riences, is brought at length, by the power of God, who 
has been watching over it and guiding it, as well as every 
other particle of matter in his universe, to the spot where, 
with its fellows, it is to receive the high honor of com- 
posing part of the first man. Xow, look back again over 
these numberless histories, and at the mass the particles 
form, and ask yourselves if you have been tracing the 
history of 'Adam as to his body' I Is the mass of in- 
organic matter lying there Adam's body I Are those par- 
ticles rocked to the lullaby of the waves little Adams \ Or,, 
those others which are careering over mountain and 
plain \ Or are the animals of which these particles once 
formed a portion the ancestors of Adam as to his body ?' 
And has it sprung from that plant ? Or do not such sug- 
gestions rather present a caricature which no one would 
venture to say constituted a good logical inference from 
the hypothesis we are considering ? Xo ; these particles 
were not 'Adam as to his body' ; they together in the mass 
were not that body ; and it is shockingly absurd to speak 
of it as such until God had fashioned it and made it 
man's body by uniting with it man's soul. 

u Applying the illustration now presented, I think you 
cannot fail to see that Dr. Girardeau's representations of 
my hypothesis are not good logical inferences, but on the 
contrary are a horrible caricature." 

Dr. Girardeau, interrupting: "I declare them to be 
positively, absolutely true, and no misrepresentation." 

Dr. Woodrow closed with an appeal to the court, in the 
name of the blaster and for the sake of the souls of men, 
that they should not by their verdict add to the word of 
God, and aid in blocking up the way of those who would 
fain press into the kingdom of heaven. 

Dr. Adams made a brief closing speech. He began by 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



591 



indignantly repelling the intimations which had been 
made as to his object in bringing Dr. Girardeau as a wit- 
ness. He went on to say that his object was to elicit the 
testimony to which we had listened ; at least, that was the 
primary object ; though, of course, he was glad to have 
the benefit of his friend's counsel. 

After the prosecutor had closed, the roll was called, and 
the members of the court expressed their opinion in the 
cause. The vote was then taken, and resulted as follows : 

As to the first part of the indictment, Guilty, 9 ; not 
guilty, 14. 

As to the second part of the indictment, Guilty, 6 ; not 
guilty, 17. 

Dr. Adams, the prosecutor, gave notice that he would 
complain to the Synod of Georgia of the decision of the 
presbytery in the case, and also as to its refusal to allow 
him to vote, and other points. 

Records of the Synod of Georgia in the Complaint Case of 
Rev. Wm, Adams, D. D., versus the Presbytery of Augusta, 
Tried Before the Synod, at Sparta, Ga., November 10-13, 
1886. 

The Rev. Dr. Adams's ''Complaint or Appeal, or Both." 

Augusta, Ga., August 24, 1886. 

The Presbyterian Church in the United States versus the Rev. 
James Woodrow, D. D. 

Grounds of complaint or appeal, or both, against the Augusta 
Presbytery in the above ease, by the Rev. William Adams. 
"'To the Presbytery of Augusta, Ga.: 

•"Dear Brethren : Before your adjournment, at Bethany, on 
Tuesday, the 17th inst., I gave you notice that I would complain to 
the Synod of Georgia against your decision in the case of the Pres- 
byterian Church in the United States versus the Rev. James Wood- 
row. D. D. I now hereby formally enter my complaint and appeal 
to the said Synod against the said decision on the following 
grounds : 

"First, That your decision in acquitting the said James Wood- 
row of the charges preferred against him by myself is contrary to 
the evidence which had been submitted at the trial, and also con- 
trary to the law in the case. Second, That certain ruling elders, 
viz., H. D. Smith, of Bethany church, and John Trowbridge, of 
Waynesboro and Bath church, were allowed to vote unconstitution- 



592 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



ally in the case — the former, H. D. Smith, being permitted to take 
his seat in the place of C. N. Jordan, who had already been enrolled 
as the alternate delegate, and who had voted at the election of the 
Moderator, and who had given no notice to presbytery that he 
wished to be relieved or desired to vacate his seat; and the latter, 
John Trowbridge, being allowed, by the ruling of the Moderator, to 
vote on the final issue, notwithstanding the fact that, pending the 
trial, he had absented himself from sittings of presbytery without 
permission of the court, and notwithstanding the distinct avowal of 
the prosecutor that, to his certain knowledge, the said John Trow- 
bridge had been absent during a part of the reading of the minutes, 
which minutes consisted of the testimony. The ruling of the Mod- 
erator in this case was as follows: that, as he had heard all the 
testimony read, and had absented himself because of sickness, he 
was entitled to vote. Third, That the ruling of the Moderator wus 
also unjust in refusing to allow one witness to express his own 
opinion, and insisting that another witness should give his opinion. 
The following is the record of the rulings referred to: When Dr. 
Girardeau was asked, 'You said that you believed at the time of 
the meeting of the Synod of South Carolina that Dr. Woodrow's 
views were not heresy. Do you believe so now?' — the Moderator 
ruled that the question was out of order; but when the defendant 
p asked the prosecutor, 'Y'ou have said that Dr. Woodrow is not guilty 

of heresy, have you not?' and when the point of order was raised 
that this question related to Dr. Adams's opinion, and should not 
be answered, the Moderator ruled that, as this class of questions 
had been allowed to go on so long, this question would also be 
allowed. Fourth, That the prosecutor was deprived of his lawful 
rights in the case by the ruling of the Moderator, 'that neither the 
prosecutor nor the accused could vote on the final issue.' (See Rules 
of Discipline, Chap, v., Par. 3, as compared with Chap, vi., Par. 19.) 

"I am truly and sincerely yours, Wm. Adams." 

Copy of Dr. Adams's letter, to which reference is made in the fol- 
lowing minutes : 

"Augusta, Ga., November 8, 1886. 
"Rev. James Stacy, D. D., Stated Clerk of the tit/nod of Georgia: 

"Dear Brother: Before the adjournment of the Augusta Presby- 
tery at Bethany on Tuesday, August the 17th, I gave notice that I 
would complain to the Synod of Georgia against their decision in 
the case of the Presbyterian Church in the United States versus the 
Rev. James Woodrow, D. D. I now formally notify you of that 
action and hand you herewith a copy of said complaint as subse- 
quently put into the hands of the Stated Clerk of the Presbytery of 
Augusta. I wish also to give you notice that I withdraw the appeal 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



593 



■which I entered with the complaint, and confine myself to the com- 
plaint alone. Should this notification of the withdrawal of the 
appeal be deemed insufficient, I respectfully ask the Synod to per- 
mit me to take this course. My reasons for this complaint are, first, 
my profound conviction that the decision of the Augusta Presbytery 
was unjust and hurtful to the church and contrary to the law and 
testimony, as fully specified in the complaint which is filed; second, 
that grave errors were committed in course of the trial, which 
■errors are specified in the complaint. 

"Fraternally yours, W. Adams." 

The complaint of Rev. Dr. Adams against the Presbytery of Au- 
gusta, with a letter to the Synod accompanying it, was referred to 
the Judicial Committee, together with all the papers in the case. 

Judicial Committee of the Synod — J. L. Rogers, E. H. Barnett, 
H. Cartledge, J. A. Billups, E. P. Eberhart. 

* * * -k -x- * * * 

Rev. J. L. Rogers, chairman of the Judicial Committee, presented 
their report on the complaint of Rev. Dr. Adams against the Presby- 
tery of Augusta. Permission was given to amend the complaint 
hy striking out the words "or appeal, or both," and its consideration 
made the first order for to-morrow morning. 

The report of the Judicial Committee on the complaint against 
the Presbytery of Augusta, as the order of the day, was approved, 
and is as follows : 

"Your Judicial Committee would report, that in the complaint of 
Rev. William Adams, D. D., against the Augusta Presbytery, in the 
•case of the Presbyterian Church in the United States versus James 
Woodrow, D. D., they find the papers in order, except that it pro- 
poses to "complain and appeal, or both." The committee recom- 
mend that Dr. Adams be allowed to amend his paper and make it 
a complaint only; and recommend that Synod hear the case in the 
order prescribed in our Book of Church Order, as follows: First, 
that the record in the cause be read. Second, to hear the complain- 
ant. Third, to hear the respondent. Fourth, to hear the com- 
plainant again. Fifth, and then it shall consider and decide the 
■case. J. L. Rogers, Chairman" 

It was resolved to enter at once upon the case, and the Moderator 
gave the required charge to the court. The record of the case was 
read, and after a recess of five minutes, the complainant was heard 
until the hour for recess, which was taken until half-past two 
•o'clock this afternoon. 

The unfinished business was resumed, and the complainant heard 



594 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



to the close of his first argument. The appointment made on yester- 
day for a foreign missionary meeting to-night was rescinded, in 
order to continue the case under consideration. Recess was taken 
for five minutes; after which the respondent — the Presbytery of 
Augusta — was heard through its appointed counsel, Rev. Dr. Wood- 
row, until recess was taken until seven o'clock to-night. 

Rev. Dr. Woodrow, as counsel for the Presbytery of Augusta, was 
then heard in the remainder of his argument; after which the com- 
plainant was heard in response. After this the roll was called, that 
members might express their opinion in the cause, the time to each 
being limited to three minutes. The complaint was then taken up 
seriatim. On the first count in the complaint the ayes and noes 
were called for and the vote stood: to sustain, 49; not sustain, 15; 
sustain in part, 2 ; as follows : 

To Sustain— Ministers— G. H. Cartledge, C. W. Lane, H. F. Hoyt, 
J. L. Cartledge, James Stacy, H. Quigg, D. Fraser, J. L. Rogers. G. 
B. Strickler, E. II . Barnett, J. H. Alexander, J. E. DuBose, X. Keff 
Smith, A. S. Doak, Win. McKay, H. C. Brown, I. W. Waddell, G. T. 
Chandler, N. H. Smith, M. McN. McKay, J. L. King, L. A. Simpson. 
Elders— .J. H. Cartledge, A. M. Scudder, J. M. Burns, E. P. Eber- 
hart, W. R. Little, G. C. Daniel, E. Huie. M. A. Candler, C. F. Fair- 
banks, L. F. Livingston, J. L. H. Waldrop, Geo. Lyon, J. T. Dolvin, 
H. D. Beman, F. White, J. A. Billups, W. H. Sherman, R. W. Gam- 
ble, W. C. Sibley, E. W. Allfriend, A. W. Blake, D. W. Or, J. L. 
Lemons, W. M. Save, T. W. Long, J. A. Barry, R. W. Love. 

Not to Sustain. — Ministers — J. R. Baird, J. L. Stevens, H. Xew- 
ton, F. T. Simpson, J. B. Morton, J. D. A. Brown, J. E. Jones, A. W. 
Clisby, B. D. D. Greer, W. A. Milner, J. W. Baker, W. A. Carter. 
Elders— A. R. Steele, P.- II. Wright, L. X. Turk. 

To Sustain in Part. — Rev. Robert Adams, Rev. T. M. Lowry. 

On the point of change of representative from Jordan to Smith, 
sustained viva voce. 

On that of permitting Elder Trowbridge to vote, not sustained, 

viva voce. 

Admission of evidence, sustained, on division, by 29 to 27. 

On that of not permitting the prosecutor to vote, not sustained, 

viva voce. 

A committee, consisting of Brethren Doak, Rogers, G. H. Cart- 
ledge, J. D. A. Brown, W. A. Milner, Billups and Candler, was ap- 
pointed to bring in a judgment of the Synod; and Synod adjourned 
till to-morrow morning at nine o'clock. Closed with prayer. 

The committee to prepare a minute expressing the judgment of 
Synod in the case of the complaint against the Presbytery of Au- 
gusta, reported the following, which was adopted: 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



595 



"Your committee, appointed by Synod to bring in a minute ex- 
pressive of the action of Synod upon the complaint of William 
Adams, D. D., against the decision of Augusta Presbytery in the 
ease of the Presbyterian Church in the United States against James 
Woodrow, D. D., and to report the judgment of Synod thereon, re- 
port that the complaint be sustained, for the reason that the finding 
and judgment of the presbytery are contrary to the evidence and the 
law, in that the evidence before the presbytery showed that the be- 
lief of the said defendant, James Woodrow, D. D., as to the origin 
of the body of Adam, was contrary to the word of God as interpreted 
in the standards of the church ; and it is therefore ordered that 
the said verdict and judgment of the presbytery is hereby annulled. 

"A. S. Doak, Chairman." 

Rev. Dr. Woodrow gave notice that he would complain to the 
General Assembly of Synod's action in his case; and Rev. Drs. G. 
B. Strickler and W. Adams and Elder J. A. Billups were appointed 
to represent Synod before the Assembly as respondent to this com- 
plaint. 

Since the adjournment of Synod, the Stated Clerk received the 
following communication from Dr. Woodrow: 

"University of South Carolina, 
"Columbia, S. C, November 20, 1886. 
"To the Rev. Dr. James Stacy, Stated Clerk of the Synod of 
Georgia : 

"Rev. and Dear Sir: On the 13th inst. the Synod of Georgia 
adopted the following: 'Your committee, appointed by the Synod to 
bring in a minute expressive of the action of the Synod on the com- 
plaint of Wm. Adams, D. D., against the decision of the Augusta 
Presbytery, in the case of the Presbyterian Church against James 
Woodrow, D. D., and report the judgment of the Synod thereon, re- 
port that the complaint be sustained, for the reason that the finding 
and judgment of the presbytery are contrary to the evidence and 
the law, in that the evidence before the presbytery showed that the 
belief of said defendant, James Woodrow, D. D., as to the origin of 
the body of Adam, was contrary to the word of God, as interpreted 
by standards of the church. It is therefore ordered, that the judg- 
ment of the presbytery be hereby annulled.' 

"Thereupon I gave notice to the Synod that I would complain to 
the next General Assembly, which will hold its session at St. Louis, 
A[o.. in May, 18S7, against this decision. 

'"My reason for so complaining is that the decision of the Synod 
is contrary to the law and the evidence. 

"Yours respectfully, James Woodrow." 



596 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



I hereby certify that the foregoing is a true copy of the Records 
of the Synod of Georgia in the complaint case of Rev. Win. Adam-. 
D. D., versus the Presbytery of Augusta. 

James Stacy. Stated Clerk. 

Dr. Woodrow being providentially hindered by severe 
illness from prosecuting bis complaint before the As- 
sembly at St. Louis, in 1887, that Assembly ordered his 
letter put on record. 

At the same Assembly overtures came up from the 
Presbyteries of South Carolina and Harmony, respecting 
evolution and the jurisdiction of the General Assembly, 
and the following is the action taken thereon. The Com- 
mittee of Bills and Overtures reported on overtures Xos. 
17 and 18. A substitute was offered as follows : 

The undersigned, members of the Committee on Bills and Over- 
tures, would respectfully present the following minority report for 
the adoption of the General Assembly : 

To overtures from the Presbyteries of Harmony and South Caro- 
lina, respecting the jurisdiction of the General Assembly over all 
the affairs, institutions, and proceedings of the lower courts, the 
General Assembly met at St. Louis, 1887, gives answer: 

1. That as our Constitution limits expressly the jurisdiction of 
each and all our church courts (Form of Government, Chap. V.. 
Sec. 2, Par. 4) , the General Assembly cannot lawfully exercise super- 
visory jurisdiction over the affairs, institutions, or proceedings of 
the lower courts, nor over their office-bearers, except as these mat- 
ters shall come before the highest court in some one of the four con- 
stitutional modes prescribed in our Rules of Discipline, viz., review, 
reference, appeal or complaint. (See Kules of Discipline, Chap. 
XIII., Sec. 1.) Therefore the action of the last Assembly is declared 
unconstitutional, which claimed and exercised supervisory jurisdic- 
tion to the extent that it assumed to directly charge an office-bearer 
under the control of the four Synods with holding views repugnant 
to the word of God and our Confession of Faith, and thereupon 
earnestly recommended that he be dismissed from office. 

2. Respecting the further question of South Carolina Presbytery, 
touching the mode of creation as defined by the last Assembly, we 
recommend that this Assembly answer: That the scriptures clearly 
reveal that, in the highest sense, God is Creator of all things, and 
consequently of Adam's body and soul ; and both the scriptures and 
our Confession of Faith teach that his body was formed of the dust 
of the ground, whether mediately or immediately ; but "the inscru- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



597 



table mode" God hath not revealed, and this Assembly holds that it 
it is not given to the church to pronounce definitely as to the mode 
by which, and the time in which, the Creator chose to work. 

Respectfully submitted, S. L. Morris, 

J. W. Greene. 

The substitute was indefinitely postponed, and the re- 
port was adopted, and is as follows : 

Overtures No. 17 and 18. From the Presbyteries of Harmony and 
South Carolina, touching the acts of the last Assembly on evolution, 
and the power of the General Assembly over theological seminaries 
and their instructors. 

Answer — Touching the subject matter referred to in these over- 
tures, this Assembly declines to formulate any detailed explanation 
of the acts of the last Assembly, as any such statement, however ex- 
pressed, could only be regarded as a new deliverance on the same 
subjects, which this Assembly does not feel called upon to make. 

Dr. Woodrow appeared before the Assembly at Balti- 
more in 1888, and his complaint was issued. Dr. William 
Adams appeared as respondent for the Synod of Georgia. 
Four hours' time was allowed to each. Judge Heiskell, a 
member of the Assembly, acted as Dr. Woodrow' s counsel, 
and Dr. Strickler assisted Dr. Adams. The vote was 
taken : To sustain, 34 ; not to sustain, 109 ; to sustain in 
part, 2 ; excused from voting, 4 ; absent or not answer- 
ing, 5. 

The committee to whom it was referred to bring in a 
minute, expressing the Assembly's judgment in this case, 
reported a preamble, stating the facts of the case, with 
this conclusion following: 

Now, therefore, it is the judgment of this General Assembly, that 
Adam's body was directly fashioned by Almighty God, of the dust of 
the ground, without any natural animal parentage of any kind. 
The wisdom of God prompted him to reveal the fact, while the in- 
scrutable mode of his action therein he has not revealed. 

Therefore, the church does not propose to touch, handle or con- 
clude any question of science which belongs to God's kingdom of 
nature. She must, by her divine constitution, see that these ques- 
tions are not thrust upon her to break the silence of scripture, and 
supplement it by any scientific hypothesis concerning the mode of 
God's being or acts in creating, which are inscrutable to us. It is 
therefore ordered that this complaint in this case be not sustained, 



598 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



and the judgment of the Synod of Georgia be, and the same is 
hereby, in all things affirmed. 

Rev. T. C. Whaling, for himself and others, offered the 
following protest, which was admitted to record without 
answer : 

We, whose names are undersigned, desire to enter our solemn pro- 
test against the decision of this General Assembly refusing to sus- 
tain the complaint of the Rev. James Woodrow, D. D., against the 
Synod of Georgia, for the following reasons : 

1. The second specification in the indictment against the Rev. 
James Woodrow, D. D., is expressly excluded by the constitution of 
the church, inasmuch as nothing ought to be considered by any court 
as an offence, or admitted as a matter of accusation, which cannot 
be proved to be such from scripture as interpreted in these stan- 
dards. 

2. In view of your protestants, the holy Bible does not reveal the 
form of the matter out of which, the time in which, or the mode by 
which, God created the body of Adam, and therefore the hypothesis 
of evolution as believed by Rev. James Woodrow, D. D., cannot be 
regarded as in conflict with the teaching of the sacred scriptures. 

3. The Westminster standards simply reproduce without inter- 
pretation the statements of the scriptures in reference to the 
creation of Adam's body; and, as the views of the complainant are 
not in conflict with the statements of the scriptures, so neither can 
they be with the teachings of the standards. 

4. The action of the Assembly in refusing to sustain this com- 
plaint is equivalent to pronouncing as certainly false the theory of 
evolution as applied by Dr. Woodrow to Adam's body, which is a 
purely scientific question, entirely foreign to the legitimate sphere 
of ecclesiastical action. Your protestants, therefore, are unwilling 
that this General Assembly should express any opinion whatever 
respecting the hypothesis of evolution or any other scientific ques- 
tion. 

This General Assembly at Baltimore is the last one at 
which Dr. Woodrow appears, either as appellant or com- 
plainant, or as in any way directly concerned personally. 
Its decision in his case seems to have gratified both those 
opposed to and those defending him. As to the former, 
this appears from the action taken at Aiken by the 
Charleston Presbytery at its very next meeting, officially 
informing its ministers, elders and deacons of the de- 
cision made by the Assembly, and forbidding any public 



CONTROVERSIES OE SCIENCE. 



599 



contending against it. As to the latter, the same appears 
in the protest to the Assembly's decision by eighteen of 
its members, the chief reason of protest being that the 
Assembly's decision against Dr. Woodrow related only to 
a scientific theory, respecting which the Assembly, as 
such, had no right to give any decision, as they had not 
been able to prove it contrary to the scriptures. 

Inasmuch, however, as the decision of Augusta Pres- 
bytery, which the Synod of Georgia annulled, had been 
a verdict declaring that Dr. Woodrow' s standing as a 
member of that presbytery was unimpeachable, and inas- 
much as the Baltimore General Assembly refused, by a 
large majority, to sustain Dr. Woodrow' s complaint 
against that Synod's annulment, there was room for the 
question, how far this highest court had impeached Dr. 
Woodrow's standing as a minister ? To this very question 
Dr. Woodrow himself called the attention of Augusta 
Presbytery. It promptly assembled in October, and 
unanimously declared him rectus in curia. Georgia 
Synod unanimously approved of presbytery's records on 
this subject. Moreover, the Augusta Presbytery elected 
Dr. Woodrow its Moderator, and also its representative 
commissioner at the ensuing Assembly of 1889, at Chat- 
tanooga. His seat in that Assembly was never challenged, 
but, on the contrary, he was recognized as a lawful nom- 
inee for the moderatorship, also was appointed and acted 
as chairman of one of its leading standing committees — 
the Committee of Publication. Moreover, the Chatta- 
nooga Assembly approved the records of the Georgia 
Synod, which had endorsed Augusta Presbytery's judg- 
ment of Dr. Woodrow's soundness in faith and good 
standing. 

N ow, respecting the verdict of the Baltimore Assembly, 
it appears from Dr. Flinn's printed speech that, while Dr. 
Woodrow's complaint was being heard, it was declared in 
effect by the Moderator, by the respondents of Georgia 
Synod, and by Dr. Woodrow, unchallenged, that he (Dr. 
Woodrow) was not on trial, that his ecclesiastical stand- 
ing would not be affected by the Assembly's action. This 
declaration was officially emphasized by the Assembly's 
not giving instructions for a new trial, or for arraigning 



600 



MY LIFE AND TIMES 



Augusta Presbytery, and by declining to enjoin silence 
or the cessation of discussion on the subject of evolution. 
All this, of course, logically and legally meant, "Dr. 
WoodroVs views may be held consistently with good 
standing in the church" ; all which would seem to signify 
a declaration by the supreme court that Dr. Woodrow's 
views were consistent with sound doctrine and good stand- 
ing; for if the Assembly thought Dr. Woodrow held 
"errors in doctrine injuriously affecting the church,"' ren- 
dering its "'advice and instruction in conformity with the 
constitution" necessary in the premises, it would have ex- 
ercised its power thus to "bear testimony, and suppress 
sehismatieal contentions and disputations." {Form of 
Government, Par. 90.) Xot doing these things was a 
declaration : "Dr. Woodrow holds no such errors, main- 
tains no such controversy ■ hence no advice is necessary" : 
for when courts are required to exercise certain acts of 
power on given contingencies, the not exercising of them 
is a declaration that the contingencies do not exist. 

Thus it was maintained by the friends of Dr. Woodrow 
that the Augusta Presbytery, the Georgia Synod, the Bal- 
timore Assembly, and the Chattanooga Assembly, and so 
the whole church, including even the Charleston Presby- 
tery, had declared that Dr. Woodrow was doctrinally and 
ecclesiastically sound, notwithstanding his evolution 
views. 

I must introduce here what could not possibly come in 
before the history of the Assembly at Baltimore, in the 
spring of 1888. 

The Syxod of South Caeolixa. 

It met at Cheraw on October 20, 1886. At that meet- 
ing the board announced to the Synod the failure of all 
efforts hitherto to remove Dr. Woodrow in the following 
terms: "At the first meeting of the board, held after the 
last meetings of the respective synods, the board recog- 
nized it as the result of their action, that Professor James 
Woodrow had not been legally removed from the Perkins 
chair, and he has. until this meeting of the board, held 
September 15, 1886, acted as such and discharged the 
duties of the chair." 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



601 



Kev. Dr. Girardeau presented a resolution, which, upon 
his own motion, was referred to the Committee on the 
Theological Seminary. 

Rev. D. S. McAllister, of the Committee on the Theo- 
logical Seminary, presented a report, in part, from a ma- 
jority of the committee, as follows : 

Your Committee on the Theological Seminary begs to submit the 
following partial report : 

We recommend that the Synod adopt the paper presented by Dr. 
Girardeau. "That this Synod, being deeply sensible of its responsi- 
bility for the administration of the high and solemn trust reposed 
in its hands in connection with the Theological Seminary, and 
deeming it important to the future welfare and efficiency of that in- 
stitution that Dr. Woodrow should withdraw from relation to it, 
hereby requests him to signify to the Synod, at once, his willing- 
ness to tender to the Board of Directors, at an early day, his resig- 
nation of the Perkins chair;"' and that this action be telegraphed, 
by special committee, at once, to Dr. Woodrow, requesting an im- 
mediate answer. D. S. McAllister, 

A. A. James, 
J. A. E^tslow. 

Rev. J. S. White, in behalf of a minority of the com- 
mittee, proposed the following amendment to the above 
report of the majority: 

It is understood that this resolution is based simply upon the 
present deplorable condition of the Seminary, without naming any 
parties responsible for it; and, further, upon what seems to be 
necessary for the future welfare of that institution; and it has no 
connection, so far as this request is concerned, with any charges 
or any action heretofore taken by our church courts in reference to 
the Perkins Professor. J. S. White, 

J. D. Harrison. 

The amendment being put, was lost by a vote of twenty- 
seven to ninety. 

The committee appointed to telegraph Dr. Woodrow, 
reported the following telegram just delivered, which was 
received as information : 

I have just received your telegram. Under existing circumstances 
I respectfully decline complying with the Synod's request. 

James Woodrow. 



602 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



Kev. Dr. Girardeau moved the following resolution, 
which was adopted by a vote of seventy-eight to forty-two : 

Whereas, this Synod adopted the following resolution: 

"Resolved, That this Synod, being deeply sensible of its responsi- 
bility for the administration of the high and solemn trust reposed 
in its hands in connection with the Theological Seminary, and 
deeming it important to the future welfare and efficiency of that in- 
stitution that Dr. Woodrow should withdraw from relation to it, 
hereby requests him to signify to the Synod at once his willingness 
to tender to the Board of Directors, at an early day, his resignation 
of the Perkins chair, and that this action be telegraphed by special 
committee, at once, to Dr. Woodrow, requesting immediate answer." 

And whereas, Dr. Woodrow has declined to comply with this re- 
quest of the Synod, therefore, 

Resolved, That the Synod of South Carolina, the other Synods 
concurring, does hereby instruct the Board of Directors to meet at 
as early a day as practicable after the meeting of the Synod of 
South Georgia and Florida, and renew the request to Dr. Woodrow 
for his resignation ; and, if he shall decline to accede to that re- 
quest, the board are hereby ordered to declare the Perkins profes- 
sorship vacant, and make such provision for the department as may 
seem best. 

Resolved, That a committee of two from each of the Synods con- 
trolling the Seminary, the other Synods concurring, be appointed to 
revise the constitution of the Seminary, and report at the meetings 
of the Synods in 1887; the joint committee to meet at Atlanta, Ga., 
at a time agreed upon by its members, and to elect its own chair- 
man ; the duty of convening the committee to be assigned to the 
person first named on the Georgia committee. 

Rev. Dr. Girardeau and Rev. George Summey were 
appointed the committee on behalf of this Synod to revise 
the constitution of the Seminary. 

The Synod of South Carolina, 1887. 

It met at Darlington on 27th of Xovember. The ma- 
jority of the Standing Committee on the Theological 
Seminary recommended the adoption by the Synod of this 
resolution, to- wit : 

Inasmuch as the board's action in removing the Rev. James Wood- 
row, D. D., from the Perkins chair, was in accordance with the 
order of the four controlling Synods, this Synod approves of and 
confirms that action. 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



603 



The minority of said committee report for Synod's 
.adoption this resolution, to-wit: 

That the board is hereby instructed, the other controlling Synods 
concurring, to proceed at once to determine the question as to Dr. 
Woodrow's alleged incompetence or unfaithfulness by a full trial, as 
is provided in the constitution of the Seminary (Sec. 2, Art. 11). 

The minority report was rejected by eighty-five to 
sixty, and then the majority report adopted without 
count. 

The select committee to revise the constitution reported 
to this Synod, but the consideration of the matter was 
postponed until next meeting of Synod. 

Synod of South Carolina, 1888. 

It followed after the Assembly at Baltimore, and met 
-at Greenwood, October 12th. 

Rev. T. C. Whaling, of the Committee on the Records 
•of Charleston Presbytery, presented this report : 

Your Committee on the Records of the Presbytery of Charleston 
have examined said records, and recommend their approval, with the 
following exceptions : 

1. On page 314 the records show that the presbytery adopted the 
following paper: 

"The Committee on Minutes of General Assembly call the atten- 
tion of the presbytery to the judicial case decided by the Assembly 
( see page 408 ) , and recommend the adoption of the following reso- 
lution: 

"Presbytery hereby informs its ministers, ruling elders and dea- 
cons, that the General Assembly has judicially affirmed the de- 
cision of the Synod of Georgia declaring that the 'belief of . . . 
James Woodrow, D. D., as to the origin of the body of Adam was 
■contrary to the word of God as interpreted in the standards of the 
•church;'' and, therefore, that this presbytery regards the holding of 
said form of evolution as 'contrary to the word of God as inter- 
preted in the standards of the church,' and forbids the public con- 
tending against the decision of the Assembly." 

Your committee recommend for the adoption of Synod the follow- 
ing resolutions : 

1. This Synod condemns this action as unconstitutional, irregular 
.and unwise for the following reasons: 

First. This action is a trespass upon the sacred and inalienable 



604 



MY LIFP; AND TIMES. 



right of private judgment, which belongs to every court and all the 
officers and members of the church of Christ. 

Secondly. This action imposes a restraint upon the right of free- 
dom in the expression of opinion, which is unwarranted by the law. 

Thirdly. This action assumes the infallibility of the General As- 
sembly in the deliverance of judicial decisions, which is a doctrine 
foreign to the Constitution and spirit of Presbyterianism. 

II. This Synod directs the Presbytery of Charleston to convene as 
soon as practicable and review and correct these proceedings, which 
the Synod has now condemned. 

T. C. Whaling, 
R. M. Cooper. 

Rev. Dr. Thompson presented a protest against the 
action of Synod just taken, which, on motion, was ad- 
mitted to record, and the following committee was ap- 
pointed to bring in an answer : Rev. X. M. Woods, Rev. 
T. C. Whaling and Judge T. B. Fraser. 

It had been agreed to take the vote seriatim and to 
record ayes and noes. The vote on the first exception was 
ninety-six ayes to fifty -eight noes. The vote for the rea- 
sons stood one hundred and four to forty-three. The vote 
on the second exception was eighty-five ayes to — . The 
paper as adopted was as above given. 

Rev. X. M. Woods presented, in behalf of the commit- 
tee, an answer to the protest of Rev. Dr. Thompson and 
others to the action of Synod on the records of Charleston 
Presbytery. 

The question being raised whether the answer to a pro- 
test is open to discussion by the body, the Moderator 
ruled that the answer is a matter before the court for its 
adoption as its answer, and that it is therefore open to 
discussion by all the members of the court, who are also 
entitled to vote on its adoption. On appeal from this 
decision it was sustained by the house. 

The answer was adopted, and the protest and answer 
are as follows : 

Protest. 

The undersigned respectfully ask to be permitted to enter our pro- 
test against the action of the Synod upon the records of the Charles- 
ton Presbytery, for the following reasons: 

1. The Synod's decision was reached upon the resolution passed 
by the presbytery, dissociated from its subsequent proceedings, ex- 



CONTROVERSIES OE SCIENCE. 



605 



planatory and defining the scope of that resolution — it is therefore 
a judgment upon a partial record, and is unjust. 

2. It denies the right of a church court to enjoin obedience to the 
deliverances of superior courts upon its members in so far as public 
contention is concerned within constitutional limits. It thus an- 
nounces a principle revolutionary in its character, and subversive of 
ecclesiastical authority. 

3. In ignoring the expository portion of the record, it virtually 
charges the presbytery with insincerity in its action, to put it in its 
mildest form. 



Your committee, appointed to bring in an answer to the protest 
recorded against Synod's action in the matter of condemning the 
records of Charleston Presbytery, beg leave to offer the following for 
entry on the minutes of Synod: 

I. In reply to the first statement of the protestants, Synod an- 
swers that its judgment was reached only after having given full 
and careful consideration to all the various matters relating to said 
action of Charleston Presbytery. The interdict itself, the protest 
made against that interdict, the answer of presbytery to that pro- 
test, and the verbal explanations made by some of the authors or 
advocates of said interdict and answer on the floor of Synod, in re- 
gard to the real meaning and intent of the same, were all duly taken 
into account by the Synod. 

II. The language of the interdict which, as presbytery's records 
show (page 314), was "fully discussed," and a yea and nay vote 
taken and recorded thereon; and despite all this discussion of op- 
posing members, that language was left unaltered and unqualified. 
That interdict, in the plainest possible terms, lays a prohibition 
upon any and every form of public criticism of the General Assem- 
bly's deliverance at Baltimore, in the matter of the complaint of 
Rev, James Woodrow, D. D., against the Synod of Georgia. That 
interdict contains no hint that its object was to prevent only vio- 



W. T. Thompson, 
George Summey, 
D. E. Frierson, 
R. H. Reid, 
P. A. Emanuel, 
T. P. Burgess, 
Jno. M. Rose, Jr., 
W. G. Vardell, 
J. H. Mc Murray, 
J. B. Mack, 



F. Y. Leg are, Jr., 
F. Y. Legare, 
J. T. B. Craig, 
E. P. Moore, 
C. W. Humphreys, 
W. J. Cunningham, 
W. F. Pearson, 
J. C. Caldwell, 
W. B. Thompson, 
H. H. Wyman, 



J. L. Girardeau. 



Answer. 



606 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



lent, factious and abusive criticisms of said deliverance. Nor is 
tb.2 sweeping severity of that interdict relieved by the very ambigu- 
ous and indefinite allusion to "a constitutional manner" of criticis- 
ing the said deliverance contained in said answer, especially when, 
the verbal explanations, offered by some of the authors and advocates 
of said interdict before this Synod, plainly revealed the fact that 
their ideas of what is, and is not, a constitutional mode of public 
contending would prohibit even respectful criticisms of said deliv- 
ance made in the newspapers. The authors and defenders of said 
interdict did not see fit to limit or qualify their words so as plainly 
to confine the prohibition, to unconstitutional, factious and abusive 
contending, and Synod felt obliged to take the language of the inter- 
dict in its plain meaning and intent. 

III. The protestants utterly misconceive Synod's position in say- 
ing that it denies the right of our church courts to enjoin obedience 
to the injunctions of the superior courts. Synod did not condemn 
Charleston Presbytery for enjoining obedience to the deliverance of 
the Assembly, but for having made an injunction of its own, which 
the Assembly had not made, and which no court has any lawful 
right to make, under our Constitution. The Assembly did not at- 
tempt to limit free speech, but said presbytery did do this of its 
own accord. The Synod is unwilling to be regarded as favoring any- 
thing like disobedience to any lawful orders of any church courts. 
Obedience to the lawful deliverances of our various ecclesiastical 
tribunals is one of the plainest duties of every Christian. Had said 
presbytery simply forbidden an unconstitutional, factious and un- 
reasonable contending on the part of those under its jurisdiction,, 
and there had been any present need for such a prohibition in said 
presbytery, this Synod would have promptly approved the same. 

IV. Synod disclaims any intention to charge insincerity upon said 
presbytery. The only charge implied in Synod's action was that 
the presbytery had exceeded its lawful prerogatives, and had taken 
action which no court of our church should tolerate for one moment, 

Xeaxder M. Woods, 
Thorxtox C. Whalixg, 
T. B. Fbaser. 

The Elwaxg Case. 

At this same meeting of the Synod the Standing Com- 
mittee on the Report of the Board of Directors of the 
Seminary were divided as majority and minority. The 
former, after presenting the ordinary subjects of the 
board's report, went on to mention their having fonnd in 
the board's minutes, also submitted to them on the part 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



607 



of the faculty, the formal expression of its will touching 
the case of Hr. Elwang, to the effect that "in view of the 
late action of a majority of the synods controlling this 
Seminary, and of what it conceives to be its consequent 
duty, Mr. Elwang should abstain from attending the lec- 
tures of Professor Woodrow. We also find it recorded in 
the minutes that the Board of Directors, at its meeting 
in May, 

"Resolved, That this board hereby approves the faculty's action 
in the case" of Mr. Ehvang. 

1. Touching this matter, your committee recommend to Synod the 
adoption of the following resolutions : 

Resolved, 1. That this Synod disapproves of the action of the fac- 
ulty in ordering Mr. W. W. Ehvang to cease attending upon the lec- 
tures of the Rev. Prof. Woodrow in the South Carolina University; 
and also of the action of the Board of Directors in sustaining and 
confirming this interdict. 

2. This Synod disavows the interpretation placed on its previous 
orders touching the Perkins Professor upon which the faculty and 
the board claim to base their late action. 

II. Your committee also recommend to the Synod the adoption of 
the following resolution: 

Resolved. That, in the present circumstances, this Synod will 
defer the consideration of the changes in the constitution of the 
Seminary which are proposed by the joint committee appointed by 
the associated Synods for its revision. 

The two resolutions contained in the first recommenda- 
tion of the majority report were adopted by a vote of 
seventy-three to forty-four, and the ayes and noes were 
recorded. Then the second recommendation was adopted. 

The following was the minority report : 

I dissent from the censure of the board and the faculty in the case 
of Mr. Elwang. The faculty were virtually authorized by the Pres- 
bytery of Xew Orleans to act in the case. We must assume that 
they acted conscientiously. Mr. Elwang's rights were not invaded, 
and no wrong was done to any one. Respectfully submitted. 

Synod of South Carolina, 18S9. 

It met at Spartanburg, October 25th. The Synod's 
committee on the minutes of the preceding Assembly at 
Chattanooga made the following report : 



608 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



This committee finds on page 589 of the Assembly's minutes that 
the Assembly "disapproved the action of the Synod of South Caro- 
lina, together with the reasons assigned therefor," in condemning 
Charleston Presbytery's order "forbidding the public contending 
against the decision of the Assembly" in the Woodrow case. 

But. inasmuch as Charleston Presbytery has declared in its 
records that it has already obeyed Synod's order to "review and 
correct its proceeding which Synod has condemned,'' we deem it 
unnecessary to do more than to reaffirm the doctrine that every 
minister, ruling elder, deacon and private member has the constitu- 
tional right to contend publicly, through the press or otherwise, 
against the decisions of all our courts from the lowest to the highest. 

The minority reported as follows : 
Resolved, That the Synod expresses its acquiescence in the de- 
cision of the General Assembly and its entire satisfaction with its 
judgment, inasmuch as its action was not intended to limit either 
the liberty or private judgment or the constitutional right of proper 
discussion. 

These reports were, on motion, both laid on the table, 
and also the following resolution : 

Resolved, That the minutes be received simply as information on 
the ground that the highest court of the church having spoken, the 
lower courts should acquiesce. This course is recommended not only 
as in accordance with law, but as conducive to the peace and har- 
mony of the church. 

The Committee on the Theological Seminary made a 
report in four sections, the whole of which was adopted. 
The second section of this report read as follows : 

2. We find nothing in the minutes or report of the board which 
requires special action on the part of Synod, but we feel constrained 
to express the wish that a brighter and happier day may soon come 
for this beloved Seminary. 

A minority of this committee moved to amend this sec- 
tion by adding to it the following: 

When all of us can love and cherish and support it as we have 
done in the past, which we cannot do under existing circumstances. 
In this connection, and looking to this result, we reiterate the action 
of last Synod touching the prohibiting of students from attending 
the lectures of Dr. Woodrow, who is an authorized minister and of 
good standing in our church, and hereby call this matter to the at- 
tention of the board and the controlling Synods. 



COXTBOYEESIES OF SCIENCE. 



609 



This motion was laid on the table by a vote of seventy- 
seven to sixty-three. 

3. The Synod of Georgia having officially notified us of the adop- 
tion of the Eevised Constitution (with amendments) by that body, 
we recommend that this be received as information, and that a 
special committee be appointed to report on this subject at our next 
meeting. 

I come now to narrate the closing details of this evolu- 
tion controversy. 

1. A Teaxsfee feovc Augusta Peesbyteey. 

The Presbytery of Augusta met at Milledgeville, Ga., 
April 1, 1890, and Dr. Woodrow, at his own request, was 
dismissed to join the Charleston Presbytery. His letter 
of application to be thus dismissed is dated April 3d. 
The writer began with expressions of regret that the time 
had come which was to separate him from the brethren 
with whom he had been connected ever since the forma- 
tion of the Augusta Presbytery. By that presbytery he 
said he was licensed in 1859, and ordained in 1860. 
Within its bounds he had spent the early years of his 
ministry, preaching to vacant congregations and in des- 
titute communities where no Presbyterian preacher was 
ever heard before. He had also served as professor mean- 
while in Oglethorpe University, at Milledgeville. But 
Pule 277 of our Book of Church Order requires a church 
member or officer, when removing his residence into an- 
other church or presbytery, to transfer his ecclesiastical 
relations along with his residence, and there was no 
longer any reason why this rule should not apply to him. 
T\ Tien the Synod of Georgia elected him a professor in 
the Seminary at Columbia, and sent him there, "I was 
not removed," said he, "from your jurisdiction, since that 
field belonged to your presbytery and synod, as well as 
to all the others." This was the rule with all the different 
professors. An ambassador does not lose his citizenship 
by residing at the court to which he is sent. "When I 
ceased doing that work, I was engaged defending myself,'' 
said he, "from charges affecting the scripturalness of my 
belief, with regard to which you had already vindicated 



610 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



me; and when, a year ago, you sent me as your com- 
missioner to the General Assembly, I felt I was still free 
from the requirement [of rule 277] until I had rendered 
an account to you of my diligence, and had been approved. 
This was done at your last meeting. But now there is 
nothing to justify my longer retaining my connection 
with you while I live outside your bounds. I am doiner 
no ecclesiastical work under your jurisdiction." 

It was true, he was still doing the work of a religious 
editor, every week for the past twenty-five years sending 
forth The Southern Presljyterion to thousands of readers, 
and this with the expressed approbation of his presbytery 
and the Synod of Georgia ; but this was not by their ap- 
pointment, nor under their jurisdiction in the doing of it, 
except as he was under the general superintendence of 
the presbytery, which is over every minister respecting 
his conduct. Xow, however, he is honorably dismissed 
from Augusta Presbytery to become a member of Charles- 
ton Presbytery, within whose bounds he has lived for a 
quarter of a century. 

2. Dr. Woodrow in the South Carolina College. 

In the Southern Presbyterian of May 15, 1890, ap- 
pears the following article : 

The Seminary Boycott. 

At its meeting last week, the Board of Directors of the Columbia- 
Theological Seminary adopted the following: 

"Inasmuch as the statement has been circulated, that the Semi- 
nary has boycotted the chair of Professor Woodrow, of Geology and 
Mineralogy, in the State University, the Board of Directors feel 
called upon to make the following minute for the benefit of all con- 
cerned : 

"In 1SS7 a student applied to the faculty for permission to at- 
tend Dr. Woodrow's course of lectures at the University. The cir- 
cumstances of the application were such that the faculty declined to 
grant it, and the board sustained the faculty. 

•"The case was exceptional, and did not determine the policy of the- 
Seminary. 

"To guard against the possibility of such misconstruction in the 
future the board hereby directs the faculty to refer all such appli- 
cants to the presbyteries under whose care they may be, and govern, 
itself according to the written wishes of the presbyteries." 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



611 



Editorial Remarks.* 

This paper will doubtless be read with interest, and also will ex- 
cite some curiosity. As far as it may be regarded as a receding 
from a wrong position, and an attempt to relieve the Seminary from 
the odium which the course of the faculty and the board had brought 
upon it, it will be received with satisfaction by lovers of the right. 
This feeling cannot be wholly prevented by the thought that the 
receding might have been more unambiguous and straightforward, 
and the statement of facts more accurate; for, however defective it 
may be in these respects, it seems at least to be intended as a step 
in the right direction. When wrong has been done, any tendency 
towards the right, however feebly and hesitating, is to be com- 
mended. An open, frank, manly confession of the wrong, and a 
strong effort to bring forth fruits meet for repentance, would cer- 
tainly be much more worthy of commendation; but let us not 
despise the feeble beginnings. 

The curiosity alluded to begins to be excited by the first clause in 

the preamble, "Inasmuch as the statement has been circulated that 

the Seminary has boycotted the chair of Professor Woodrow." That 

statement has been made several times, beginning between two and 

three years ago, about the time when the fact occurred which is 

embodied in the statement — in 1887. It may naturally be asked 

how it happens that the directors only now at this late date feel 

called upon to explain it, or explain it away? 

***** ** ** * 

In its new enactment, it is to be observed that the board takes 
away from the faculty the right to give permission to any Seminary 
student to attend Professor Woodrow's lectures, and forbids all such 
attendance, except when the presbytery concerned is applied to and 
gives its permission. 

The faculty are still free to give permission to students to attend 
other lectures in the University of South Carolina, but not Professor 
Woodrow's. So far as the board is concerned, these are still "boy- 
cotted"; and the only way to escape from this prohibition is by 
formal application to a presbytery and formal resolution granting 
permission from that body. 

On the 22d of May, 1890, appeared the following: 
The Seminary Directors' Explanatory Minute. 
Last week we published the action of the Theological Seminary 
Board of Directors, depriving the faculty of the right to grant per- 
mission to students to attend Professor Woodrow's lectures in the 

* I am under the necessity of sometimes shortening these editorial 
remarks. 



612 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



University, and making it necessary for those who desire to do so to 
obtain beforehand written permission from their presbyteries. We 
said that "the board's statement of the ease may hardly be accepted 
as quite full or accurate," but did not then show wherein it was in- 
accurate. How very far it is from being correct we shall now de- 
monstrate. As we intimated last week, the board must have forgot- 
ten; otherwise it is inconceivable that they should have said what 
they did. Let us see. 

At the recent meeting, the board said: 

"In 1887 a student applied to the faculty for permission to attend 
Dr. Woodrow's course of lectures at the University. The circum- 
stances of the application were such that the faculty declined to 
grant it, and the board sustained the faculty. 

"The case was exceptional, and did not determine the policy of the 
Seminary." 

At its meeting in May, 1888, the board said: 

"Whereas, this board has heard a statement of facts from the 
faculty touching their action in regard to Messrs. W. W. Elwang 
and W. C. C. Foster attending the lectures of Professor James Wood- 
row in South Carolina University, therefore, 

"Resolved, 1. That this board hereby approve of the faculty's 
action in the cases of said students. 

"Resolved, 2. That the faculty's statement of facts be spread upon 
our records. 

"Resolved, 3. In view of the agitation in the church growing out 
of these cases, that our religious papers be requested to publish this 
statement." 

Compare these two statements ; do they agree ? 

The two points emphasized in the recent statement are that "a 
student" — a single student — was concerned, and that the "case" — 
single case — was exceptional, rendered so by the "circumstances of 
the application," and that it was solely because of these "circum- 
stances" "that the faculty declined to grant it." 

But in 1888 the board approved the action of the faculty in two 
cases, not in one alone — "their action in regard to Messrs. W. W. 
Elwang and W. C. C. Foster :"' and in one of these there never had 
been any application attended by "circumstances" or otherwise ! 

How could the board in 1890 be so forgetful in two years? Surely 
it ought to have refreshed the memory by reading the official records 
before venturing to make this statement. 

But the next point is much more serious. The board says that 
"the circumstances of the application were such that the faculty 
declined to grant it, and the board sustained the faculty." If it had 
not been for these circumstances, the faculty would not have de- 
clined to grant it, nor would the board have approved, if the faculty 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



613 



had done so. Let the correctness of this statement be tested by 
what the faculty told the board was the ground of their declining 
in the paper above referred to, which was published by the board's 
request (Southern Presbyterian, May 24, 1888) : 

"The following expository minute was adopted by the faculty 
soon after formal action was taken prohibiting Mr. Elwang's at- 
tendance upon Professor Woodrow's lectures: 

" '1. In taking this action the faculty was guided by the principle 
of obedience to constituted authority. It recognizes itself as ap- 
pointed by the Board of Directors and the controlling Synods for 
the discharge of solemn trusts confided by them to its hands, and 
as bound, so long as it freely remains in connection with the Sem- 
inary, to comply with the will of these authorities. These bodies 
have removed Professor Woodrow from relation to this institution, 
because of their unwillingness to have the influence of his teaching 
exerted upon its students. The purport of this action obviously was 
to separate the students from that influence. But were they per- 
mitted to attend his lectures, which might be expected to involve the 
topic in regard to which the board and the Synods have taken 
action, it would be virtually all one as if he were still occupying a 
chair in the Seminary. The only real difference would be as to the 
place of instruction. A few steps in space annihilated the dif- 
ference. 

" 'It is true that Professor Woodrow does not now teach under the 
sanction of the bodies governing the Seminary; but were the stu- 
dents of that institution formally allowed to put themselves under 
his instructions, the case would be practically the same as if he had 
that sanction. The faculty were therefore obliged by a sense of duty 
to fulfill the manifest intentions of the controlling authorities, by 
arresting the attendance of a Seminary student upon the lectures of 
Professor Woodrow. . . . So, a body of theological students is 
limited by its relation to the government under which it exists in 
the exercise of its freedom. It is one thing for a Seminary student 
to read in private the writings of Professor Woodrow, and quite 
another to attend publicly and statedly upon his instructions. In 
the one case his liberty of free inquiry is unrestrained; in the other, 
it is restricted by the requirements of an authority to which he is 
bound to submit, as long as his voluntary subjection to it continues. 
In the present instance, this limiting influence upon free action 
operates in a two-fold manner; it binds both the students and the 
faculty of the Seminary to comply with the expressed will of the 
bodies by which the institution is governed. Neither class is at 
liberty to disobey lawful authority. If the yoke is intolerable, free- 
dom may be enjoyed by retirement from the institution.' (Minutes, 
pp. 67-70.) " 



614 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



In view of this "expository minute," how could the board say 
what it did two weeks ago about its action two years ago? Is not 
such forgetfulness well-nigh inexcusable? Why did it not take more 
pains to "be sure of its facts"? 

In 1888 the board approved the faculty's action, and, to make sure 
that the reasons of this approval should not be misunderstood, re- 
quested that the faculty's statement explaining its action and set- 
ting forth the grounds of it, should be published. In its "expository 
minute" the faculty says that, in its action "prohibiting Mr. El- 
wang's attendance upon Professor Woodrow's lectures," it "was 
guided by the principle of obedience to constituted authority" . . . 
and "bound" "to comply with the will of these authorities." 
namely, the board and the controlling Synods; that "these bodies 
have removed Professor Woodrow from relation to this institution 
because of their unwillingness to have the influence of his teaching 
exerted upon its students. The purport of this action obviously was 
to separate students" — not Mr. Elwang on account of "the circum- 
stances of his application" — but "to separate the students from that 
influence;" hence the prohibition of Mr. Elwang. The faculty fur- 
ther says, "The faculty were, therefore, obliged by a sense of duty to 
fulfill the manifest intentions of the controlling authorities, by ar- 
resting the attendance of a Seminary student upon the lectures of 
Prof. Woodrow." It says further that both the students and the 
faculty are bound "to comply with the expressed will of the bodies 
by which the institution is governed," and therefore it had taken 
its action. The principle is general, universal, in its application, 
says the faculty; and the board, in 1888, "approved." A t om?, the 
board says, "the case was exceptional, and did not determine the 
policy of the Seminary;" that the faculty had acted as it did on 
account of the "circumstances of the application." Could two 
statements be more directly contradictory? The faculty in 1888 
adopted an "expository minute;" two weeks ago the board felt 
"called upon to make the following minute," which we have been 
examining; are not other explanatory minutes sadly needed? In 
view of the direct, palpable contradictions pointed out, what is the 
board, or rather the part of it concerned, going to do? It wishes to 
have the confidence of its constituents; confidence is not gained or 
retained by such contradictions. 

On J une 5th appears the following article : 

The Rev. Dr. Thompson's Reply. 
To the Editor of the Southern Presbyterian: My attention has 
been called to your recent editorials touching a paper presented by 
myself at the last meeting of the Board of Directors of Columbia 



CONTROVERSIES OE SCIENCE. 



615 



Theological Seminary, and as you invite, I hope you will give place 
to the following reply: 

1. The resolutions you quote had not been forgotten: I voted for 
their adoption, and with a knowledge of the reasons for and the 
meaning of them. I prepared the paper you have seen fit to criticise, 
and I reaffirm its accuracy as to fact. Did it ever occur to you that 
you might reason from wrong premises, or that your memory might 
be defective? Such a reflection should make you more guarded in 
your statements, and more temperate in your language. 

2. That paper was presented with the sincere desire to relieve the 
long-vexed Seminary, as far as possible, of embarrassment, that with- 
out hindrance it might pursue its God-given work of preparing 
young men for the gospel ministry. The board so understood it. 
and when it was passed, only one member declined to vote. 

It seems to me that, unless there are those who are bent upon 
agitation, we might now have peace. W- T. Thompson. 

Charleston, 8. C. May 29, 1890. 

Editorial Remaeks. 

I. In the first sentence of his first paragraph, Dr. Thompson shows 
that he cannot adopt the apology which we suggested — forgetful- 
ness : not a very good one, it is true, but yet the best we could think 
of, and, indeed, the only one that would relieve the board from the 
terrible predicament in which it has placed itself. He tells us he 
remembered the paper he voted for in 1888, and yet prepared the 
paper adopted in 1890 ! Most surprising of all, he ''reaffirms its 
accuracy as to fact." We wish he had tried to set forth his reasons 
for believing in the accuracy of this reaffirmation. As we demon- 
strated two weeks ago, the two papers are utterly inconsistent with 
each other. Both cannot be correct. 

The last (1890) says that the application for permission to at- 
tend Dr. Woodrow's lectures at the University was declined because 
of "the circumstances of the application:" that ''the case was ex- 
ceptional, and did not determine the policy of the Seminary.'-' 

The first (1888) says that the faculty's declaration is approved 
which asserts that the '"'purport of the action" of the controlling 
Synods "obviously was to separate the students from that influ- 
ence" — the influence of Professor Woodrow's teaching: and that 
"the faculty were therefore obliged by a sense of duty to fulfill the 
manifest intention of the controlling authorities, by arresting the 
attendance of a Seminary student upon the lectures of Professor 
Woodrow." 

Yet, Dr. Thompson said in his paper, and now "reaffirms," that this 
act, performed in accordance with the principle of obedience to the 
controlling authorities — that all-embracing, universal principle — 



616 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



"was exceptional and did not determine the policy of the Seminary." 
How could he prepare that paper and "reaffirm its accuracy as to 

fact"? 

Nothing more can be needed to prove its entire, complete ^-"accu- 
racy as to fact."' The language of the paper of 1888 is clear and 
needs no further interpretation. If it did, we find it in the inter- 
pretation given by a member of the Board of Directors in defending 
the board's action before the Synod of South Carolina in 1888. 
Contemporaneous construction by the parties immediately con- 
cerned is of the highest value. At that meeting the Hon. D. S. Hen- 
derson, of Aiken, one of the Board of Directors, said, as reported for 
the Columbia Register, "I esteem this the most important matter 
that has or will come before this Synod. It brings up the contest 
fairly and squarely, and it should be settled once for all. When 
we meet as Christian brethren, there should be no sides. The charge 
here made is that the faculty was wrong in forbidding students to 
attend the lectures of Dr. Woodrow. In considering the charge, 
Synod should look at the surroundings. The board had been directed 
to remove Dr. Woodrow from the Seminary because he taught what 
was contrary to the word of God; and if it was improper for him 
to teach in the Seminary, it was improper for students to hear him 
elsewhere. It was not an effort to boycott Dr. Woodrow, but it 
would be mockery to prohibit it in the Seminary and allow the stu- 
dents to hear it elsewhere. The board felt it its duty to say that 
what should not be taught in the Seminary should not be listened 
to elsewhere." 

"The board felt it its duty to say that what should not be taught 
in the Seminary should not be listened to elsewhere." And yet Dr. 
Thompson, and the directors under his lead, now say that "the case 
was exceptional and did not determine the policy of the Seminary." 
How could they say that? 

Dr. Thompson next asks us if it ever occurred to us that we might 
reason from wrong premises, or that our memory might be defective. 
Yes, very often. Hence we always exercise the utmost care to avoid 
the former. And knowing how defective our memory is, we take 
the utmost pains to be sure of our facts, as in this case, by carefully 
examining the documentary evidence bearing upon the matter. We 
have not in the least trusted to memory, as the readers of our 
articles see. Would that the board had been equally careful! But 
if we have not been temperate, we are ready and anxious to confess 
our fault, as soon as it shall be pointed out to us by friend or foe. 
We try to make our meaning unmistakably clear, but wholly to 
avoid intemperate language. 

2. We do not question the motive that actuated Dr. Thompson and 
his fellow-directors. But, as we said in our first article, while the 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



617 



"intention was no doubt good," "the judgment displayed in attempt- 
ing to carry it out, scarcely deserves equal praise." The desire was 
"to relieve the long-vexed Seminary, as far as possible, of embarrass- 
ment" — a praiseworthy desire, certainly. It has been "long-vexed" 
by those who now control it — for six years or more, ever since they 
began their assaults upon one of the professors, thereby causing two 
other professors to leave, and reducing the attendance of students, 
so that it was necessary to close the Seminary's doors. Part of the 
"vexing" later consisted in "determining the policy of the Sem- 
inary" "to separate students from the influence" of Professor Wood- 
row's teaching, not only in the Seminary, but in the University, 
or wherever else he might teach. Can the board now hope to relieve 
the Seminary from embarrassment by denying, in the face of the 
plainest facts, that such policy was established? Surely not. 

If the policy, as established in 1888, was right, adhere unflinch- 
ingly to it. If it was wrong, hasten to say so in clear, unmistakable 
terms, and abrogate it. There is no other fair, square, manly, Chris- 
tian way. 

Has the board done either? No, it has not. If, as asserted in 
1888, the controlling authorities required students to be separated 
from the influence of Professor Woodrow's teaching, the board has 
now disobeyed these authorities in making it possible for Seminary 
students to come under that influence by obtaining written permis- 
sion from their presbyteries. If the controlling authorities did not 
require this, the board has now required it, by its new rule that the 
faculty may not give permission, that the students may not listen to 
this University professor, unless they have written permission from 
their presbyteries. Does the board, after reflection, really think this 
is a good way to "relieve the long-vexed Seminary of embarrass- 
ment" ? 

Respecting Dr. Thompson's last sentence, we must say a few 
words. We have no desire for agitation. During all these weary 
years, we have constantly stood on the defensive, seeking to ward 
off and repel assaults upon what we thought and think to be right 
and true. So, in this instance — the subject has not been introduced 
by us. Notwithstanding the continued resting of the ban of the 
"controlling authorities" upon Professor Woodrow, we have for a 
long time been silent; content to suffer in silence, if indeed that 
is suffering which is accompanied by the consciousness before God of 
being in the right — that it is the result of an honest defence of his 
truth. Now, this action of the board came to us for publication; 
if we had published its allusion to Dr. Woodrow without comment, 
we would reasonably have been regarded as acquiescing in its accu- 
racy, hence we were forced to point out its inaccuracies and its 
general character — not for the sake of agitation, but for the sake 



618 



MY LIFE AND TIDIES. 



of the truth. If agitation has been renewed, the board, and not we, 
must be held responsible for it. 

Since Dr. Thompson's reply must appear so wholly unsatisfactory 
to all who examine the facts, will the other directors who voted for 
the papers of 1888 and 1890 permit the matter to stand as it now i- 2 

The following appeared on June 12, 1890 : 

The Rev. Dr. Thompson's Second Reply. 

To the Editor of the Southern Presbyterian : I am sure the sub- 
joined remarks will evince, to all unprejudiced minds, the entire 
accuracy of the paper recently adopted by the Board of Directors of 
the Columbia Seminary. 

1. The names of Messrs. Elwang and Foster appear in the resolu- 
tions of 1888 passed by the board, and upon this fact chiefly the 
discrepancy is made to hang. 

Mr. Foster had been attending Dr. Woodrow's lectures; he made 
no request to be permitted to continue to take them. He withdrew 
from the Seminary before the close of the term. The faculty took 
no action in his case, as it had learned only a short time before his 
leaving of his attendance upon the lectures; the board heard the 
statement, and approved the non-action. 

Mr. Elwang is the only student with whom the faculty had any 
dealing. The board, in its paper, so affirms, and the point thus 
made and insisted upon is abundantly confirmed by the faculty's 
minute quoted by yourself, which reads, "The following expository 
minute was adopted by the faculty soon after formal action was 
taken prohibiting Mr. Elwang' 's attendance upon Professor Wood- 
row's lectures." 

Thus, it seems that but one person has ever made application, but 
one case has ever been before the faculty, and but one case has ever 
been prohibited. 

The resolution of 1888, and the position of the board in 1890, to 
this extent, then, are seen to be at one. 

2. Mr. Elwang's case was presented in such a way, and attended 
by such circumstances, as led the board to sustain the faculty's 
course. 

This I maintained in the Synod at Greenwood ( see Southern Pres- 
byterian of October 18, 1888), where I am reported as saying, "The 
faculty were driven to this action, and had no alternative. The cir- 
cumstances and reasons therefor should be considered, and not the 
naked fact." 

That "circumstances'" there were, and that these must have been 
"exceptional," appears from an editorial in the Southern Presby- 
terian of February 23, 1888, which tells us that, pending the Elwang 



CONTKOVEBSIES OF SCIENCE. 



619 



case, "the student from Alabama (Mr. Foster) was attending the 
lectures in question, and he was forbidden neither by the faculty 
formally, nor by the faculty informally, nor by Dr. Girardeau, or 
other member of the faculty, nor even by a son-in-law. And he con- 
tinued to attend until he left the Seminary 'in good standing.' " 

Thus again, it is shown that there was but one case, and that it 
must have been exceptional. Those circumstances need not be re- 
hearsed, and, for the sake of peace, they are not revived. 

Since, then, there never was but one case, and it was dealt with 
in view of its specific features, how can it be claimed, with any show 
of reason or of justice, that it determined the Seminary's policy in 
regard to Dr. Woodrow's chair in the State University? 

The position of the board in 1890, therefore, stands to this extent, 
that "the case was exceptional, and did not determine the policy of 
the Seminary." 

3. You concede the pacific intention of the board in adopting that 
paper, indeed, the purpose of that paper is evident upon its face, 
it wears no disguise — it is transparent through and through — and I 
feel certain that the dispassionate judgment of your readers will 
cordially commend it, and will deprecate, not a calm statement of 
what you and your correspondents may conceive to be the facts, for 
the sake of truth, but the spirit in which you and they employ them, 
and the harsh insinuations in some instances connected with them, 
as savoring of unwarranted and hurtful agitation. 

I would suggest to one of your contributors, who delivers a homily 
upon what is "honorable," "that he has impeached his own character 
:as a" teacher upon this subject, when he writes, as he does, of Chris- 
tian brethren and withholds his name. W. T. Thompson. 

Editorial Eemarks. 

We are glad that Dr. Thompson has at length seen the necessity 
he was under of at least making an effort to relieve himself and the 
TJoard of Directors from the painful position into which he has led 
them. A very little reflection must have convinced him that a mere 
reaffirmation would not answer the purpose. The fact that he has 
signally failed to accomplish his object should not deprive him of 
the credit he deserves for having made the effort. 

1. Dr. Thompson says that the "discrepancy is made to hang" 
"chiefly" upon the fact that "the names of Messrs. Elwang and Fos- 
ter appear in the resolutions of 1888 passed by the board."' Oh! no, 
not "chiefly;" for, after we had proved the discrepancy by placing 
the action in 188S and 1890 side by side, we proceeded to say, "But 
the next point is much more serious," and then showed wherein it 
was so. It is not necessary to repeat what we said in this first 
point (May 22d) : if it had been, Dr. Thompson has saved us the 



620 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



trouble; for he implicitly admits, with unmistakable plainness, that 
in 1888 "the policy of the Seminary" was to prevent attendance on 
Dr. Woodrow's lectures, by telling us that "the faculty took no 
action in his [Mr. Foster's] case, as it had learned only a short time 
before his leaving of his attendance upon the lectures." Thus Dr. 
Thompson tells us the policy had been determined, but in this case 
there was no need or opportunity of applying it. 

Dr. Thompson's further attempt to show that "the case was ex- 
ceptional, and did not determine the policy of the Seminary," be- 
cause "Mr. Elwang is the only student" to whom the policy was ap- 
plied, is equivalent to an attempt to prove that the sentencing of a 
single murderer to death does not determine the policy of the State 
to punish murder with death, but shows that the case is "excep- 
tional." But it is useless to argue this point, since the faculty has 
told us why it prohibited in the so-called "exceptional" case. "The 
faculty unanimously adopted" as the "formal expression of its will 
touching his [Mr. Elwang's] case" the following resolution: 

"Resolved, That, in view of the late action of a majority* of the 
Synods controlling this Seminary, and of what it conceives to be its 
consequent duty in the administration of the disciplinary govern- 
ment of the institution, the faculty hereby expresses its judgment 
that Mr. Elwang should abstain from attending the lectures of Pro- 
fessor Woodrow." (Minutes, p. 63.) 

This action the board, in 1888, made its own. It lays down the 
"policy" as "determined" and applies it; and yet Dr. Thompson 
now insists that because it was applied to only one person, "the case 
was exceptional, and did not determine the policy of the Seminary."" 
Further, the faculty and board in 1888 said that the action was 
taken "in view of the late action of a majority of the Synods con- 
trolling this Seminary," and now Dr. Thompson and the board say 
the action was taken because of "the circumstances of the applica- 
tion"! And still further, Dr. Thompson says above, "The resolu- 
tions of 1888, and the position of the board in 1890, to this extent,, 
then, are seen to be at one"! 

2. Nearly all of what Dr. Thompson says under the second head 
has already been examined. But he was right, in 1888, when he 
said, "The faculty were driven to this action, and had no alterna- 
tive." As the faculty stated, it felt itself driven to the action by 
the "principle of obedience to constituted authority" ; it was "bound 
to comply with the will of these authorities"; "the faculty were r 
therefore, obliged by a sense of duty to fulfill the manifest inten- 
tions of the controlling authorities, by arresting the attendance of 
a Seminary student upon the lectures of Professor Woodrow." Yes,. 



* The Synod of South Georgia and Florida had not then met. 



CONTROVERSIES OE SCIENCE. 



621 



the faculty were "driven," as Dr. Thompson says; but "driven" by 
a wholly different motive power from that which he now alleges. 
Surely nothing more is needed under this head to show how utterly 
untenable is the position now taken by Dr. Thompson and the 
board. 

3. All that is said of "pacific intention," "spirit," "harsh insinua- 
tions," "hurtful agitation," etc., is aside from the questions at issue. 
It is to no purpose when contradictory statements are made and 
the contradiction is proved, to say, "We meant well; our intention 
was pacific; don't expose our inconsistency, for that would be 'hurt- 
ful agitation,' and you would be showing a bad spirit." And, there- 
fore, we do not care to reply to Dr. Thompson's remarks under the 
third head. If he and those acting with him deprecate agitation, 
why did they renew it? 

We have shown beyond question that the policy of prohibition was 
determined in 1888 as completely as anything could be. But if it 
had not been, the board under Dr. Thompson's lead has now deter- 
mined it. Suppose some misguided student should hereafter desire 
to attend the dangerous lectures — as two of the present students 
informed us eight months ago they did desire to do — would he be 
allowed to attend? He could attend the lectures of other Univer- 
sity professors ; but dare he attend Professor Woodrow's ? No, says 
the board ; not even the Seminary faculty may give permission to do 
so ; "the board hereby directs the faculty to refer all such applicants 
to the presbyteries under whose care they may be, and govern itself 
according to the written wishes of the presbyteries." If the student 
is not under the care of a presbytery, there is no way by which he 
■can obtain a dispensation to do the disapproved thing. If he is 
under such care, then he must apply to his presbytery, which meets 
twice a year, and await its written permission. The student must 
be terribly in earnest who will attempt to overcome such barriers ; 
and the danger must be terribly great against which the board 
would guard him by interposing such barriers. 

The following appeared on June 19, 1890: 

The Rev. Dr. Thompson's Third Reply. 
To the Editor of the Southern Presbyterian: From some cause 
your paper did not reach me until late on Saturday, and I avail my- 
self of this the earliest possible moment on Monday morning to 
return an answer. Had I known my harmless paper, intended and 
adopted as an irenicon, would have precipitated upon the church the 
numerous articles to which it has given rise, I would have hesitated 
about presenting it. The discussion has not been without benefit, 
however, for others, it appears, have shared your misapprehensions 



622 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES, 



as to what has been done by the board in the past touching the 
so-called "boycott." 5 and will have, it is to be hoped, a better un- 
derstanding and kindlier judgment of a body of public servants 
who have tried to meet their grave responsibilities in the fear of 
God. 

To begin then, this much has been made certain to those who had 
received a different impression, that but one case has ever been 
before the faculty, respecting attendance upon Professor YVoodrow's. 
lectures. It remains to be shown, that "circumstances" in that ca-e. 
that single case, had to do with the decision of the board in sustain- 
ing the action taken by the faculty therein. 

By this time it has been seen that my memory is excellent, and 
that my statements have not been wanting in "documentary evi- 
dence;'* let me say that I write with the entire history of the 
case before me, in the official records of the faculty. The case is 
simply this: Mr. Elwang, of Xew Orleans Presbytery, had been at- 
tending Dr. Woodrow's lectures. He informed one of the professors 
that he had, upon grounds of expediency, concluded to abstain from 
further attendance upon them: in this decision the members of the 
faculty concurred without taking formal action as a faculty. 

Soon after, a letter was received by the faculty from the Corres- 
pondent of Education of the Xew Orleans Presbytery, stating, "I 
have instructed Mr. Elwang to resume immediately, if he so desires, 
his attendance upon the lectures in question in the South Carolina 
University'* ; also a letter from Mr. Elwang announcing his purpose 
"to resume attendance upon Dr. Woodrow's lectures," with the 
avowed design of forcing upon the faculty the "square issue" of its 
formal approval or disapproval. 

In this emergency the faculty referred the case to the presbytery, 
soliciting an "expression of its judgment in regard to it," concluding 
its communication thus, "While we have no disposition to lay an in- 
terdict upon the free inquiries of students in any sphere of investi- 
gation, we are impelled by a sense of duty to raise the question be- 
fore the presbytery, as in our opinion possessed of the right to direct 
the education of its candidates, whether restrictions are not legiti- 
mate in this peculiar and exceptional instance." 

A pro re nata meeting of the presbytery was called, and the fol- 
lowing resolutions were adopted in reply: 

"1. We sustain the administration of the Seminary in the matter 
referred to us, and enjoin upon our candidate to respect its 
authority. 

"2. Presbytery disclaims any responsibility for the instructions 
given by our Correspondent of Education. They were given without 
the knowledge or consent of this body, and entirely fail to indicate 
the views or wishes of presbytery." 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



623 



Mr. Elwang again insisted upon a formal expression of the 
faculty's "will in the premises." 

Upon this the faculty passed a resolution expressing "its judg- 
ment that Mr. Elwang should abstain from attending the lectures of 
Professor Woodrow." 

Now. with this record in its hands, in the light of these "circum- 
stances," namely, that Mr. Elwang and the Correspondent of Edu- 
cation forced the issue ; that the faculty, notwithstanding its con- 
victions, was not eager to act; that the New Orleans Presbytery, 
whose "right it is to direct the education of its candidate," was 
asked "if restrictions in this instance are not legitimate"; that the 
presbytery said in substance, "Yes, the instructions of our Corres- 
pondent of Education do not indicate our wishes" ; that Mr. Elwang 
still insisted upon a formal expression of the faculty's will — I say 
it was in view of these "circumstances" that the board approved of 
the faculty's inhibition. 

The board did have the faculty's "expository minute" spread upon 
its records, but did not necessarily adopt its course of reasoning. 
In church courts, at times, papers are engrossed without approval or 
disapproval. 

Could not the board act upon the facts above stated entirely apart 
from the argument operating with the faculty? And could it not, 
in view of those facts, fully endorse the restriction put upon Mr. 
Elwang without endorsing that argument ? 

Is it not evident, then, that Mr. Elwang's case was exceptional? 
I disclaim the charge of renewing agitation. When a peace measure 
is offered, as shown by the fact that the board as now constituted 
adopted it, but one member declining to vote, he who attacks it is 
responsible for the agitation that may ensue. W. T. Thompson. 

Editoeial Remarks. 
The third reply of the Rev. Dr. W. T. Thompson increases the 
amazement that was excited by his resolution adopted by the board, 
and that has been growing steadily at each of his vain attempts to 
defend that "harmless paper." In spite of repeated demonstrations 
of its absolute incorrectness in every essential particular, he sticks 
to it. In spite of the plainest facts, he complacently holds to his 
assumptions, and seems even to hope that he may be able to per- 
suade others to believe likewise in the reality of his fairy tale. He 
sees probable benefit in the discussion, as he finds that our "misap- 
prehensions, as to what has been done by the board in the past 
touching the so-called 'boycott,' " are shared in by others. This is 
true, except that our opinions on this point are not misapprehen- 
sions, and we doubt whether any one except Dr. Thompson would 
venture so stoutly to contradict well-known historical facts. 



MY LIFE AZS"B TIMES 



Be it remembered that Dr. Thompson is trying to prove that the 
"policy of the Seminary" has not been determined in the past as to 
students attending Professor Woodrow's lectures in the South Caro- 
lina University: that, in short, the "boycott" has had no existence! 
The audacity of the attempt is astounding, and to refute it by 
labored argument is as useless as to try to prove the existence of 
the sun shining in the heavens. 

But we must examine the remarkable argument of Dr. Thompson. 
His points are (1) that "but one case has ever been before the fac- 
ulty respecting attendance upon Professor Woodrow's lectures:" 
and (2) that •••circumstances' in that single case had to do with 
the decision of the board in sustaining the action taken by the 
faculty therein.*'* 

(1) His first point is entirely incorrect. This is amply shown 
by the following quotations from the Statement of the Faculty to 
the Board, published May 24. 1888: 

"During the first part of this session of the Seminary, the fac- 
ulty did not suppose that, in view of the action of the bodies con- 
trolling the institution, any of the students would attend Professor 
Woodrow's lectures. It appears that during that time a few of 
them did attend those lectures. 

''The Rev. Mr. Blackburn, a former student of the Seminary, and 
pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in this city, having heard 
that some of the students were attending Professor Woodrow's lec- 
tures, had interviews with all who were doing so. except Mr. Foster, 
and endeavored to convince them of the inexpediency of that course. 
They acceded to the representations made by him and ceased to 
attend. 

"This communication left the faculty no option. Some definite 
action was necessitated. They decided to refer Mr. Elwang's case 
to his presbytery. 

"At the same time the faculty decided to inquire of Mr. Foster 
whether he were attending Professor Woodrow's lectures, and, if 
such should prove to be the fact, to refer his case to the Presbytery 
of South Alabama, on the ground that no discrimination could be 
made between the two cases. Professor Girardeau, in accordance 
with the faculty's request, had an interview with Mr. Foster, im- 
mediately after the determination to refer Mr. Elwang's case to the 
Presbytery of Xew Orleans, and inquired of him whether he were 
attending Professor Woodrow's lectures. His answer was in the 
affirmative. He was then informed that, as he was in circumstances 
similar to those of Mr. Elwang, the faculty intended to refer his 
case to his presbytery. ... He was told that, as he was about 
to leave the institution, it was not at all likely that the faculty 
would refer his case to his presbytery. The professor reported these 



CONTROVERSIES OE SCIENCE. 



625 



facts to the faculty, and they determined to drop Mr. Foster's 
ease." 

Its incorrectness is further shown by the words of the board in 
their action in 1888, as follows: 

"Whereas, this board has heard a statement of facts from the 
faculty touching their action in regard to Messrs. W. W. Elwang 
and W. C. C. Foster attending the lectures of Professor James Wood- 
row in South Carolina University, therefore, 

"Resolved, 1. That this board hereby approve of the faculty's 
action in the cases of said students. 

"Resolved, 2. That the faculty's statement of facts be spread upon 
our records. 

"Resolved, 3. In view of the agitation in the church growing out 
of these cases, that our religious papers be requested to publish this 
statement." 

It is clear, furthermore, that Mr. Elwang's "single case" was a 
test case. It settled the "policy of the Seminary" as positively as a 
policy could be settled. It was so regarded by all concerned, and by 
the church at large. This is further evidenced by the history of the 
past session. Last fall two Seminary students desired to attend 
Professor Woodrow's University lectures, one of them having form- 
ally obtained his permission to do so. But they were frightened off. 
They could not stand the pressure brought to bear upon them in 
consequence of the notorious "policy of the Seminary." The moral 
backbone necessary to resist its influence was more than could be 
expected of these young men. And who could greatly blame their 
prudence? Why should they expose themselves to the vindictive- 
Tiess of those high in authority? They had doubtless heard of min- 
isters being made to suffer for just such refractoriness, and why 
should they subject themselves in the outset of their career to the 
poisoned shafts that have been hurled at others? 

(2) Dr. Thompson's second point is not only incorrect, but, even 
if it were true, it does not touch the question. The declaration of 
his resolution is that a student applied to the faculty, and "the 
circumstances of the application were such that the faculty de- 
clined to grant it, and the board sustained the faculty." This he 
supports by laboriously trying to show that " 'circumstances' in that 
case had to do with the action of the board in sustaining the fac- 
ulty." A gross ignoratio elenchi! For he declared that the faculty 
had acted on account of certain circumstances, and, when this is 
shown by the faculty's own words to be incorrect, he blandly pro- 
ceeds to show that the board acted on these circumstances, repudi- 
ating the faculty altogether! 

But passing this, his position is utterly untenable. 

In his argument he repudiates the reasoning of the faculty upon 



626 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



which it based the entire "boycott." The most startling thing in 
this third reply of Dr. Thompson, perhaps, is this cool repudiation, 
in behalf of the board, of the faculty's carefully prepared "exposi- 
tory minute." Really, this is too unkind! To such straits has Dr. 
Thompson been driven in the vain attempt to show that the state- 
ments made in the recent action of the board are true. The facts 
are against him, and hence he calmly repudiates the statement of 
the faculty in order to remove the inconsistency! We very much 
fear Dr. Thompson is getting deeper and deeper in the mire. He is 
now, if possible, more hopelessly involved than ever. For, with the 
documentary evidence before one, it is impossible to consider this 
late repudiation of the faculty's statements as anything else than an 
afterthought now made to bolster up an indefensible position. 
What is this evidence? 

The faculty made a long and full "statement" to the board in 
regard to the "boycott," giving its history at length, and closing 
with an "expository minute" in explanation and defence of their 
course. The board thereupon ''Resolved, 1. That this board hereby 
approve of the faculty's action in the cases of said students. 2. 
That the faculty's statement of facts be spread upon our records. 
3. In view of the agitation in the church growing out of these cases, 
that our religious papers be requested to publish this statement." 

Can any one believe that at that time the board did not approve 
of the faculty's reasons, as Dr. Thompson would now have us be- 
lieve? The board not only spread the faculty's statement on its own 
records, but expressly requested all our religious papers to publish 
it. The board thereby endorsed that statement. No disapproval 
was then expressed, none was felt, and it is worse than idle to say 
now that the action of the faculty may have been sustained on 
grounds other than those assigned by the faculty. WTien this is done 
by a superior court, it is always expressly so stated in the opinion 
of the court. 

But suppose that the Board did repudiate the faculty's reasoning 
— and that this has been most carefully concealed all these years, 
dining all the debates on the "•boycott" in the Synods and else- 
where — then the board had no ground to stand upon. True, Dr. 
Thompson gives an array of "circumstances" in view of which he- 
says "the board approved of the faculty's inhibition." These "cir- 
cumstances" amount to this, that the faculty were not eager to act 
according to their convictions, but were forced to do so, and the 
Presbytery of New Orleans told them that, in its opinion, "restric- 
tions in this instance are legitimate" ! Was there ever a frailer 
basis assigned by a friend for the deliberate action of a board? 

As to the closing paragraph, we cannot believe that the board 
carefully and fully considered its action in adopting this "peace 



COXTROVEESIES OF SCIENCE. 



627 



measure." We cannot believe that it expresses the convictions of all 
the members. We must believe that it was pushed through hur- 
riedly and without sufficient examination of its true character, 
under the whip and spur of the majority. We cannot even believe 
that that majority would endorse Dr. Thompson's strange defence of 
his resolution. 



Reviewing all the facts, there remains the painful conviction that 
this recent act of the board is a pitiful attempt to "crawfish" out 
of a false position, without confession of wrong-doing. In the 
avowed interests of peace, history is perverted. The fact of the 
existence of the "boycott" has been notorious — it has been openly 
and boldly attacked, and as openly and boldly defended, in pres- 
byteries, synods, and the public press. And now the board, under 
Dr. Thompson's leadership, says it is all a "misconstruction" — there 
has been no "boycott" at all! Students have not been forbidden to 
attend these University lectures! There was only one single ease, 
peculiar to itself! And in defending this inconceivably strange 
position, Dr. Thompson repudiates for the board the careful reason- 
ing of the faculty on which alone the "boycott" can be logically de- 
fended. Surely, it is a pitiable spectacle. The faculty has been 
sorely wounded in the house of its friends. 

How much better would it have been for the board to have 
squarely annulled this "boycott," which has been rightfully de- 
nounced as infamous, rather than to seek vainly to escape the 
odium it has brought upon its instigators, by denying its existence 
in the face of the knowledge of the world to the contrary ! 

The following appeared on the 26th of June, 1890 : 

The Rev. Dr. Thompson's Fourth Reply. 

To the Editor of the Southern Presbyterian: In my correspon- 
dence so far, I have, not employed one intemperate word, nor a single 
phrase that could be called discourteous; on the contrary, I have 
calmly dealt with facts, which have demonstrated conclusively that 
but one case has ever been before the faculty, and that the "circum- 
stances" of that case, as I stated at the Greenwood Synod, led the 
board to approve of the action of the faculty. 

Various expressions in your last editorial show that your feelings 
have betrayed you into such an entire forgetfulness of what is be- 
coming in a discussion between gentlemen, as to forfeit your right 
to further notice from myself, even had there been any need to 
answer an article, which, to every one who has read the correspon- 
dence, must have answered itself. W. T. Thompson. 

June 2], 1890. 



628 



MY LIFE AOT} TIMES. 



Editorial Remarks. 

It sometimes happens, during a discussion, that the statements 
made by one party are without foundation, that his reasoning is 
unsound and illogical, and that his conclusions, therefore, are wholly 
wrong. When this state of things has been clearly pointed out, the 
unfortunate disputant is at a loss to know what to do; he can no 
longer maintain his indefensible position except by disproved reitera- 
tions : he does not like to confess his errors; the only thing that 
seems to be left is to become angry, and to abuse whoever may have 
pointed out his mistakes. This appears now to be Dr. Thompson's 
unhappy plight. We are not going to praise him on account of his 
personal abuse; but we wish to state the palliating circumstances 
attending his conduct, and to beg that he be not too severely con- 
demned for it. His mistakes as to fact and the unwisdom of the 
course which he led the board to adopt having been so plainly set 
forth, it was natural that he should be irritated. But. of course, we 
are not to be understood as saying that he should not have exercised 
self-restraint. 

This fourth reply has no right to a place in our columns, but we 
publish it as showing the best that he can do in the straits into 
which he is driven. We do not intend to answer his personalities 
in this reply any more than we have done in those in which he in- 
dulged in his previous replies. From the first he has charged those 
opposed to his views with intemperate language, and with being 
"bent upon agitation," "unwarranted and hurtful agitation," with 
objectionable "spirit," etc.; but no progress towards the truth can 
be made by discussing these charges ; and as the truth alone is what 
we seek, we decline discussing them. 

Meanwhile the utterance of the Seminary Board of Directors 
stands, setting forth more or less distinctly, among other things: 

1. That there never was any "boycott" against Professor Wood- 
row's University lectures; that it is all a mistake to think there 
was. 

2. That one student was forbidden to attend these lectures, and 
that the directors never intended to approve of anything more. If 
the faculty did, why, so much the worse for the faculty; and its 
views (after approval by the board in 1888), are now cruelly repu- 
diated by the leader of the board. 

3. That, the board having denied the previous existence of the 
"boycott," it now institutes it, and ordains that the only escape 
from its operation is through written permission from presby- 
teries — the faculty being entirely stripped of all authority in the 
matter. 

4. That, as explained by the author of the paper, all this has 
been done in the interests of "peace" — as an "irenicon." 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



629 



If this is to promote "peace," we wonder what would have been 
done if the intention had been to provoke war ! 

A Cakd. 

Mr. Editor: The statement has been twice made in your paper to 
the effect that the recent action of the Board of Directors of Col- 
umbia Theological Seminary respecting the '"boycott*' was unani- 
mously adopted, except that one member declined to vote. The un- 
dersigned is no doubt the member referred to as declining to vote. 
Such a representation does not do me full justice. Twice or three 
times before the vote was taken I tried to show that the paper pro- 
posed was objectionable, and would not accomplish the end in view. 
I asked that it be not hurriedly pressed to a vote, but that time be 
allowed for reflection and for conference. 

My desire was to have it laid over until the next day. It was a 
complete surprise to some of us — we expected no such "olive-branch" 
— we were not prepared for it, and so I insisted that time be 
allowed for conference. Another member of the board proposed 
privately to the author of the paper that it be referred to a special 
committee. But others thought differently, and soon the vote was 
taken and the paper adopted. 

When it became evident that the paper would be adopted, it then 
occurred to me, that perhaps the next best thing to do would be, 
without farther opposition, to let those most interested in the paper 
make their own explanation of their own former action. And so I 
voted neither for nor against it. 

But upon farther reflection, I became convinced that I had made a 
mistake — that I would be counted as approving of the action, and 
as voting for it. Therefore, the next day, before a full meeting of 
the board, I stated again some of my objections to the paper 
adopted, and said distinctly that I did not wish to be regarded as 
either approving or voting for it. The very object which I had in 
view in thus again referring to the matter was that I might be 
known and counted, not merely as declining to vote, but as being 
decidedly opposed to the action, and as voting against it. Inas- 
much as a yea and nay vote was not taken, I did not consider it 
necessary to have my vote recorded. But had such a vote been 
taken, I would most certainly have asked to be recorded in the 
negative. I am sorry that I failed to make myself fully understood. 

If the English language can ever be interpreted with any degree 
of confidence as to its true meaning, it seems to me beyond the pos- 
sibility of a doubt that the action of the faculty and of the board 
of 18S8 did determine the policy of the Seminary; and I fail 
utterly to see how it was not so intended. Twice or three times, I 
urged that it was wrong to refer the matter to the presbyteries. If 



630 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



the "boycott" was right, the board ought to have insisted on its 
continuance. If it was wrong, the board ought to have removed it. 
If it never existed, the board certainly made a great mistake in not 
assuring the controlling Synods of the fact long, long ago. It would 
Tiave saved a great deal of time, and a great deal of hard feeling. It 
is hard to conceive why information so important was withheld for 
two years. If the "boycott" has never existed as is now alleged — if 
Mr. Elwang's case was exceptional, and was so meant — where is 
either the sense or propriety of taking the matter up after two 
years, and referring the cases of all other students, who may desire 
to attend said lectures, to their respective presbyteries? It is vir- 
tually saying to them, "You never have been prohibited; but, inas- 
much as some thick-headed ministers and elders have thought that 
you were, and have circulated erroneous statements to that effect, 
therefore, we, the Board of Directors, sitting in solemn assembly, do 
enact that henceforth not one of you shall attend without a written 
permit from your respective presbyteries. Hitherto you have been 
at perfect liberty to do as you were pleased about the matter, but 
henceforth you must have a written permit." 

Is it not evident that there is inconsistency somewhere? 

W. W. Mills. 

The following, from a well-known and much-honored 
minister of the South Carolina Synod, lately deceased, 
shall close my history of this boycott : 

The conclusion we have reached is that the board not only has not 
removed the boycott, but has reaffirmed it. We are sorry the board 
did not wipe out this cause of dissatisfaction and irritation, for it 
is certain that until this is fairly and squarely done, the Seminary 
will not regain its former place in the affections of our people. 

Newberry, S. C, May 21, 1890. J. S. Cozby. 

3. Rejected by Charleston Presbytery. 

In the Southern Presbyterian of October 16, 1890, ap- 
pears the following paragraph: 

Charleston Presbytery. 
Charleston Presbytery met at Allendale last week. During the 
meeting, it considered the letter of the Presbytery of Augusta, dis- 
missing the Rev. Dr. Woodrow to Charleston Presbytery. The "ex- 
amination" on experimental religion, theology, and church govern- 
ment, consisted of a series of statements and questions read by the 
Rev. Dr. Webb, which he said he had been, six months ago, requested 
I>y a number of his fellow-presbyters to prepare. A large number 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



631 



of the questions were objected to by the Rev. Professor Flinn, but in 
every instance the Moderator promptly decided that they were con- 
stitutional and proper. 

At the close of this ••examination," Dr. Webb presented a paper 
setting forth the decision of the presbytery. The body did not ven- 
ture to subject this paper to the light of discussion, but required 
that it be voted on at once, in accordance with a resolution offered 
by the Rev. Dr. Thompson. 

The following is taken from the Charleston News and 
Courier of October 11, 1890: 

The usual examination, to which applicants are subjected, fol- 
lowed the presentation of Dr. Woodrow's letter. This was conducted 
wholly in writing, and much time was devoted to a calm, deliberate 
inquisition as to the applicant's doctrinal beliefs, etc. Dr. Woodrow 
was present, and conducted his own side of the case with his well- 
known ability and vigor. 

The following account is from the Southern Presby- 
terian of October 23, 1890: 

Dr. Woodrow's Examination. 
Questions by the Rev. R. A. Webb, D. D. 
Experimental Religion. 

Q. Will you state to the presbytery the evidence of conversion 
which satisfies your own mind? A. The evidence is my conviction 
that I have accepted the terms on which salvation is offered in the 
sacred Scriptures, viz., that I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
have repented of sin. 

Q. State to the presbytery the evidence of growth in grace which 
comforts you most. A. My chief and highest comfort is that I am 
conscious of growth in love to Jesus Christ my Saviour. 

Q. It is currently reported that your life is almost wholly secular- 
ized; that you are the proprietor of a job printing office, professor 
in the South Carolina University, president of the Central National 
Rank of Columbia, president of the Home Insurance Company, direc- 
tor in the C, N. & L. R. R. Co., vice-president of the Columbia Land 
and Investment Company, vice-president of a Building and Loan 
Association, director of the Piedmont Land and Improvement Com- 
pany, -director of the Congaree Lumber or Furniture Company, pres- 
ident of the Carolina Loan and Investment Company. How do you 
reconcile this state of things with your ministerial vows and voca- 
tion ? A. The enumeration is in the main correct. I am professor in 
the University of South Carolina, president of the Central Bank of 



032 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



Columbia, president of the South Carolina Home Insurance Com- 
pany, president of the Carolina Loan and Investment Company, 
vice-president of the Congaree Lumber and Furniture Company, 
vice-president of a Building and Loan Company, vice-president of 
the Columbia Land and Improvement Company, director in the C, 
N. & L. R. R. Co. I am also director in the C, 0. & A. R. R. Co. ; I 
am also a director of the Columbia Phosphate Company; I am not 
a director of the Piedmont Land and Improvement Company, nor am 
I the proprietor of a job printing office. But I am editor of the 
Southern Presbyterian. I reconcile this state of things with my 
ministerial vows and vocation by the fact that I am making full 
proof of my ministry by disseminating the gospel for the edification 
of the church through the press: that I am debarred from preaching 
in the many pulpits to which I am constantly invited by the con- 
dition of my throat, under the advice of a physician; and from 
teaching in a theological seminary by the action of the Synod of 
South Carolina and three other Synods. I give no time to secular 
employment until I have done all in my power to disseminate the 
gospel through the Southern Presbyterian. 

Q. How is it that the condition of your throat does not prevent 
your lecturing in the University, while it prevents you almost 
wholly from preaching in the pulpits of our churches? A. Without 
considering how far the members of this presbytery need to be in- 
formed on the subject, I answer that lecturing on scientific subjects 
to twenty-five or thirty- five students in a small room, requires only 
a conversational tone, while all know that such an amount of voice 
is not at all adequate in preaching. 

Q. In the Southern Presbyterian, November 8, 1888, you three 
times publish this presbytery as the "Charleston Inquisition," once as 
the "Venerable Inquisition," and its decisions as "Papal Pronuncia- 
mentos." In the issue of November 29, 1888, you publish an article 
under the title of "More Work for the Inquisition"; the "Venerable 
Inquisition," and its decisions as papal pronunciamentos, "Inquisi- 
torial Imprecations." In the issue of December 20, 1888, you pub- 
lish the following language, "I am almost afraid to read the news 
for fear I shall see the startling head-lines : A. R. K. Burned by 
order of His Holiness the Pope, in the Holy City, at Columbia, Seat 
of the Papal Dominions, and Rendezvous of His Minions." And 
again this presbytery is called "the venerable Inquisition."' Will 
you disavow these offensive epithets? A. I do not remember the 
above quotations from the Southern Presbyterian in their connec- 
tion, so that I can neither reiterate nor disavow them. But I may 
add that, so far as anything that I have ever published in the 
Southern Presbyterian is concerned, I am prepared to show before 
any tribunal where I may be charged with having committed an 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



633 



offence in such publication, that such publication was right and 
proper, and not an offence. But, of course, this cannot be done 
where there is no opportunity of showing the exact meaning of the 
quotations by pointing out their connection with other parts of the 
articles in which they appear, and their relation to current events. 

Q. In an editorial, June 6, 1889, you published this language, "We 
have a supreme contempt for such popish orders as the interdict. 
. . . Our feeling is reinforced by an honest indignation that a 
presbytery of our church should be so misled as to attempt such an 
iniquity. . . . We are not to be turned from this path by the 
rumbling thunder of any petty inquisition." In an editorial, Octo- 
ber 11, 1888, you say, "This is not the first time that authority has 
been unlawfully assumed in attempts to lord it over God's heritage; 
but we shall be greatly surprised if it is not found that the senti- 
ment still burns brightly in every true Presbyterian breast, 'Re- 
sistance to tyrants is obedience to God.' " In an editorial, March 
21, 1889, you characterize a resolution of this oody as the "presby- 
tery's horrible decree." Will you retract this offensive language? 
A. Without considering whether or not I am now called upon to 
defend what was done more than a year ago, I give the same answer 
to this question as to the last. 

Q. In 1888, when the Synod of South Carolina met at Greenwood, 
it directed this presbytery to meet and correct a certain minute. In 
commenting upon this correction, you say in an editorial, March 21, 
1889, "Whether this action of the presbytery constitutes obedience 
to Synod, and whether the members of presbytery sincerely believe 
that it does, are questions we do not propose to discuss. No doubt 
the Synod will consider the first next fall. The consciences of the 
members of presbytery who voted for the two resolutions in a court 
of the Lord Jesus Christ — 1, That we will obey; 2, That we regard 
what we are doing as obedience to what we sincerely believe to be 
the meaning of Synod's order — the consciences of these members are 
deciding, or will hereafter decide, this second question in the sight 
of the Lord of the conscience." In an editorial of April 25, 1889, 
in commenting upon a report of the proceedings of this presbytery 
published in the Charleston World, which this body had declared 
"incorrect, partial and misleading," you say, "In view of the recent 
history of Charleston Presbytery, a very strong reason for believing 
in the correctness of the World's report, to many minds, might be 
found in the fact that the presbytery adopted a resolution condemn- 
ing it." Will you retract these reflections upon this presbytery's 
sincerity and veracity? A. I give to this question the same answer 
as to the last. 

Q. In 1888, at its regular meeting at Aiken, S. C, this presbytery 
spread the following upon its minutes, "Presbytery hereby informs 



634 



MY LIFE AIsD TIMES. 



its ministers, ruling elders, and deacons, that the General Assembly 
has judicially affirmed the decision of the Synod of Georgia, declar- 
ing that 'The belief of . . . James Woodrow, D. D., as to the 
origin of the body of Adam, was contrary to the word of God as 
interpreted in the standards of the church ; and that, therefore, this 
presbytery regards the holding of said form of evolution as con- 
trary to the word of God as interpreted in the standards of the 
church, and forbids the public contending against the decision of 
of the Assembly." Under an order of the Synod, the presbytery in- 
serted into this resolution the words, "except in a constitutional 
manner." The General Assembly at Chattanooga in 1889, by a 
vote of 104 to 36, sustained this action. Will you submit to this 
resolution and obey the same? A. If this question means, will I 
obey any resolution forbidding the doing of anything whatever ex- 
cept in a constitutional manner, I unhesitatingly say that I will 
never in the future do anything except in a constitutional manner, 
as I have always endeavored not to do in the past. 

Q. Why have you so strenuously contended against this resolution, 
and so severely criticised this presbytery for its passage? A. I do 
not remember that I have objected to the resolution when proper 
emphasis has been laid on the clause, "Except in a constitutional) 
manner." My criticism of the resolution in other respects I am 
ready to explain and defend whenever suitable opportunity is given. 
The columns of the Southern Presbyterian will show fully my 
reasons. 

Q. In an editorial, June 6, 1889, after the meeting of the Assembly 
at Chattanooga, concerning this presbytery, you used the following 
language, "But many of whose acts, by the rest of mankind, in- 
cluding ourselves, are regarded with very mixed feelings, in which 
neither respect nor admiration is specially prominent." Are there 
any of the acts of this body devoid of your respect, and regarded 
by you as here described? A. I cannot recall all the acts of this 
presbytery with sufficient definiteness to enable me to answer this 
question. But if the presbytery's acts are repeated to me, I will, if 
the presbytery desire, give my opinion of each as far as possible. 

Q. After the meeting of the General Assembly at Chattanooga, 
after the words, "Except in a constitutional manner," had been in- 
troduced into the resolution characterized by you as the "Aiken 
interdict," commenting upon that very resolution, June 6, 1889, you 
use this language, "We are not to be turned from this path by the 
rumbling thunder of any petty inquisition, more especially when 
one of the fundamental principles of the Presbyterian faith — liberty 
in the Lord — is attempted to be destroyed. We will not, dare not. 
hold our peace." Do you adhere to this purpose concerning this 
resolution? A. The language quoted above can have no reference to 



CONTEOVEBSIES OF SCIENCE. 



635 



the whole resolution, including the added exception; as, with the 
exception, the resolution restrains no rightful liberty. With regard 
to any attempt to restrain the liberty rightly enjoyed by one of the 
Lord's freemen, I adhere, with all my heart, to the purpose ex- 
pressed in my words as quoted. 

Theology. 

Q. Do you hold the Confession of Faith in the same sense now that 
you did when you subscribed it? A. I hold the Confession of Faith 
now in exactly the same sense that I did when I subscribed it, viz., 
as containing the system of doctrine set forth in the sacred Scrip- 
tures. 

Q. Is there any part of the Confession of Faith, any individual 
statement or doctrine of it, to which you except ? If any, what ? A. 
In the chapter on Creation (IV.) Par. 1, I except to the statement 
that "it pleased God in the beginning to create or make of nothing 
the world, and all things therein ... in the space of six days" — 
if this statement means that this world was made of nothing in six 
•days of twenty-four hours each. In the Confession proper, I know 
of nothing else to which I except. And I believe that the Westmin- 
ster Assembly intended to teach the doctrine to which I object. 

Q. Do you still hold the views on the subject of evolution which 
you have published? A. I hold firmly to all the views on evolution 
which I have published in the last six and a half years. All my 
studies during that time have convinced me more and more of their 
probable truth. 

Q. Do you claim the right to advocate these views as you may 
have occasion? A. I claim the right to advocate these views as I 
may have occasion. The occasion seldom arises among students of 
natural history, as the truth of evolution, with certain limitations, 
amongst them is almost universally taken for granted as established. 
If the occasion should arise, I shall exercise it — subject, of course, 
to the rightful authority of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction under 
which I may be. 

Church Government. 
Q. In the Huntsville Assembly, 1871, while defending yourself 
•against the accusations of Mr. Cater, you said, "The voice of this 
Assembly is to me the voice of God." Was the voice of the Assem- 
blies of Augusta and Baltimore, the one making a deliverance in 
thesi. and the other a judicial decision against your views of evolu- 
tion, the voice of God to you? A. The statement that the voice of 
the General Assembly, or other church court, is to me the voice of 
God expresses my view to-night as in 1871, when understood and 
interpreted according to the in thesi deliverance of the General As- 
sembly in 1880 on this subject. I do not regard the General Assem- 



636 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



bly, or other church court, as infallible. I believe that the General 
Assembly of 188G (Augusta) erred in some respects regarding evo- 
lution, and that the judicial decision of the General Assembly in 
1888 (Baltimore) contained contradictory statements. Therefore, 
having exercised the right set forth in 1880, I do not regard the in 
thesi deliverance of 1880, and the judicial decision of 1888, as the 
voice of God; while I have submitted in all respects to all that 
seemed to me to be commanded by the Baltimore General Assembly's 
judicial decision by calling the attention of the Presbytery of Au- 
gusta to it, and requesting them to apply it in any way they might 
think proper. 

Questions by the Rev. J. William Flinn : 

Q, Without reference to the admissibility of Mr. Webb's third 
question concerning your occupations, how much of your time is 
engaged in the secular pursuits there enumerated? A. It would be 
hard for me to say exactly. One railway directorship has occupied 
me about an hour within the last year; another, two or three hours; 
all the other directorships, vice-presidencies and presidencies, ex- 
cept that of the Central Bank, from three to eight, or ten hours each 
per annum. At the bank I spend most of my hours in the morning, 
except when at the University — using my room there as my study. 
My bank work is not clerical or mechanical, and requires time only 
to decide matters submitted to me — sometimes, perhaps in all, two 
hours a day, sometimes fifteen minutes; the rest of the time at 
the bank I spend in editing the Southern Presbyterian, studying 
scientific and other works with reference to my University work, etc. 
I lecture and hold recitations at the college one or two hours a 
day for nine months. The rest of my time — which contains more 
hours than most professional men devote to all their work — I give 
to editing the Southern Presbyterian, with the mechanical depart- 
ment of which I have nothing to do. I have recently spent two or 
three weeks in travelling in the North. I do not think all my direc- 
torships, etc., enumerated, with the two exceptions noted, occupy 
more working hours during the year than were consumed in this 
journey. 

Q. When engaged in these pursuits into which Providence has led 
you, do you strive, by your example and your influence, to recom- 
mend the Christian faith and life to those with whom you come in 
contact ? A. I so strive. 

Q. Were you elected to these various positions? A. Yes. 

Q. What do the people of your community think of known Chris- 
tian fidelity of character and uprightness of life as one of the quali- 
fications for such offices as you hold? A. I do not know. Integrity, 
business ability, and the like, are looked for; but I cannot say that 
Christianity, as such, enters into the case. 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



637 



Q. Have you reason to believe that God has blessed your Christian 
teaching and example in your home by making your children's lives 
consecrated to Christ? A. All I am willing to say in reply to this 
question is that I earnestly thank God for having blessed me in this 
particular. As to what my children are, and how they became so. I 
must leave it to others to express an opinion. 

Q. As professor in the South Carolina University, do you, as far 
as practicable, take pastoral oversight of those committed to your 
charge ? Are you diligent in sowing the seed of the Word, and gath- 
ering the fruit thereof as one who watches for souls 2 And have you 
reason for believing that God blesses your work? A. As teacher in 
the University. I do all in my power to sow the seed of the Word as 
one who watches for souls. I take and make opportunity in my 
class-room to urge belief in the word of God as of infinitely higher 
importance than anything else; to teach that the Bible is true in 
every particular ; that there is not the slightest ground in science 
for declining to accept it as wholly true; that, while the laws by 
which God governs his physical universe are uniform, they are not 
so in such sense as to lead to disbelief in miracles; and as to sim- 
ilar matters, as far as practicable. As to fruit. I may not speak 
fully, but may say I have good reason to believe that not a few of 
my pupils have been strengthened in their belief in the Bible by 
my teachings, and that from the minds of others, difficulties in the 
way of believing have been removed. I may perhaps be pardoned 
for adding that I have been told by the youth himself, and his now 
bereaved mother, that it was my class-room teachings and private 
counsels which were largely instrumental in leading one of my re- 
cent pupils to accept and love Christ as his Saviour — a pupil who, 
in the Geological Survey Corps, lost his life a few months ago in a 
distant northwestern State. I add no more, as I am not willing un- 
duly to consume your time. 

Q. Waiving the admissibility of Mr. Webb's questions concerning 
certain publications in the Southern Presbyterian, when, as editor, 
you have criticised current events in the church, do you ever do so 
in a spirit of bitterness or ill-will, or with any motive to injure any 
church court or any individual? A. So far as I know my own heart, 
never. 

Q. Do you. ex animo. answer affirmatively the following questions: 

1. "Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and Xew Testaments 
to be the word of God. the only infallible rule of faith and practice? 

2. "Do you sincerely receive and adopt the Confession of Faith 
and the Catechisms of this church as containing the system of doc- 
trine taught in the holy Scriptures? 

3. "Do you approve of the government and discipline of the Pres- 
byterian Church in the United States? 



638 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



4. "Do you promise subjection to your brethren in the Lord? 

5. "Have you been induced, as far as you know your own heart, to 
seek the office of the holy ministry, out of love to God, and a sincere 
desire to promote his glory in the gospel of his Son? 

6. "Do you promise to be zealous and faithful in maintaining the 
truths of the gospel and the purity and peace of the church, what- 
ever persecution or opposition may arise unto you on that account? 

7. "Do you engage to be faithful and diligent in the exercise of all 
yoar duties as a Christian, and a minister of the gospel, whether 
personal or relative, private or public; and to endeavor, by the 
grace of God,, to adorn the profession of the gospel in your conversa- 
tion, and to walk with exemplary piety before those among whom 
God calls you to labor?" — Form of Government, Par. 119, Ques. 1-7. 

A. I do answer all these questions affirmatively ex animo. 
Questions by the Rev. G. A. Blackburn : 

Q. How can ecclesiastical bodies rightfully restrain the privilege 
you claim of advocating your views on evolution? A. I do not know. 
Whether or not such right exists, or may exist, under any con- 
ceivable circumstances, 1 have not sufficiently considered to be able 
to express an opinion. 

Q. Would you feel at liberty to advocate these views before your 
classes at the University against any in thesi or judicial decision of 
our church courts on this subject? A. If called, in the course of my 
teaching, to discuss such subjects, I would feel at liberty to ad- 
vocate my views before my classes under the conditions set forth in 
the question. If not entitled, under our church law, to exercise this 
liberty, I would hold myself ready for trial before our church courts 
for having been guilty of an offence. If found guilty, I would obey 
the command of the church courts thus legally given, so long as I 
remained under their jurisdiction. 

Q. Do you regard the Baltimore decision as restraining your lib- 
erty to advocate your views on evolution? A. I do not. The Balti- 
more decision affirmed the judgment of the Synod of Georgia, which 
annulled the decision of the Presbytery of Augusta, which was that 
I was not guilty. The effect of this was to remand the whole ques- 
tion to the presbytery for its action. The presbytery declared there 
was no cause for action against me, when I avowed my continued 
belief of my previously expressed views; the Synod of Georgia ap- 
proved the record setting forth this fact; the General Assembly 
approved the Synod's records. Hence I concluded, both from this 
action, and from the entire absence of any prohibition in the Balti- 
more decision, that no attempt to restrain my liberty had been 
intended. 

Dr. Woodrow offered the following explanation : I wish to explain 
one of my answers given yesterday, by saying that I did not intend 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIEXCE. 



639 



to recognize the Aiken resolution forbidding, etc.. as ever having 
been addressed to me; so far as I remember, it is addressed ex- 
clusively to the ministers, ruling elders and deacons in Charleston 
Presbytery. I do not recognize the right of one presbytery to ex- 
ercise jurisdiction OA~er the members of another. 



At the close of the examination, the Eev. R. A. Webb. D. D., 
offered the following resolution: 

"Resolved. That Dr. YVoodrow's examination be declared unsatis- 
factory, and that his application for membership in this presbytery 
be declined. 

"1. Because Dr. YVoodrow's examination reveals the fact that his 
life has become so thoroughly secularized, that this body, were it 
to receive him into its membership, would feel constrained to re- 
monstrate with him, and this would involve this presbytery in a 
controversy which it does not desire. 

"2. Because Dr. YYoodrow has so seriously reflected upon the 
honor, the sincerity and veracity of this body in the columns of the 
paper which he edits, that this presbytery feels bound by consider- 
ations of dignity and self-respect to deny him the fellowship which 
he seeks. In response to the presbytery's demand for the with- 
drawal of these reflections, he said, 'I can neither reiterate nor dis- 
avow them. But I may add that, so far as anything that I have 
ever published in the Southern Presbyterian is concerned, I am pre- 
pared to show, before any tribunal where I may be charged with 
having committed an offence in such publication, that such publica- 
tion was right and proper, and not an offence.' Instead of dis- 
avowing these offensive epithets, he thus declares his ability to 
prove them right and proper. He himself has shut the door of this 
presbytery in his own face. 

"'3. Because Dr. YVoodrow has declared his disrespect for, and con- 
tempt of, some of the acts of this presbytery, and, upon the demand 
of this body, he has failed to satisfy it as to the language he used, 
and as to his spirit of obedience. 

"'4. Because Dr. YYoodrow has reaffirmed his doctrinal errors on 
the subject of evolution, which have been condemned several times 
by the courts of the church as contrary to the Presbyterian stan- 
dards, saying. e I hold firmly to all the views on evolution which I 
have published in the last six and a half years. All my studies 
during that time have convinced me more and more of their proba- 
ble truth.' 

"5. Because Dr. YYoodrow claims the right to advocate these views 
of evolution as occasion may present itself in the face of every 



640 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



species of decision known to our law. 'I claim.' he. say?, 'the right 
to advocate these views as I may have occasion.' 

"6. Because the reception of Dr. Woodrow under these circum- 
stances would put this presbytery in grievous contradiction with 
itself, while this body is still convinced of the correctness of its 
-past history touching the matters involved; and with this history 
Dr. Woodrow was familiar when he brought his letter to this pres- 
bytery. 

"7. Because this presbytery agrees with Dr. Woodrow. when he 
said, in commenting upon Dr. Richardson's vote against the recep- 
tion of Dr. Martin into the Presbytery of Memphis, "Consistency re- 
quired every one who agreed with him as to the character of the 
doctrine in question to vote with him.' (Southern Presbyterian. 
August 13, 20, 1885.) This presbytery, in rejecting Dr. Woodrow. 
is in accord with these views of his editorial. 

"8. This presbytery is persuaded that it traverses no law of the 
church in rejecting this application. The law of the church, self- 
protection, and self-respect alike authorize it." 

Immediately after the reading of this resolution, Rev. W. T. 
Thompson, D. D., said, "In view of the examination, I move that the 
vote be taken upon the resolution without debate; for to discuss 
the question of fellowship with one who has flung into our teeth 
substantially the charge of habitual untruthfulness is, to say the 
least, to compromise our self-respect." This motion of Dr. Thomp- 
son prevailed: and the resolution offered by Dr. Webb was adopted 
by a vote of 17 to G. 

Presbytery ordered the examination spread upon the minutes, 
and appointed Rev. R. A. Webb, D. D., Rev. W. T. Thompson, D. D.. 
and Rev. J. R. Dow a committee to publish one thousand copies of 
the same and distribute them equally among the ministers of the 
presbytery. 

Rev. J. W. Flinn gave notice of complaint to the Synod of South 
Carolina against this action of the presbytery rejecting Dr. Wood- 
row, and Rev. R. A. Webb. D. D.. and Rev. W. T. Thompson, D. D., 
were appointed to represent the presbytery in the complaint. 

Professor Flinn's Objection to Certain Questions. 

Professor Flinn objected to Dr. Webb's third question as inadmis- 
sible on the ground that it unwarrantably implied that the holding 
of the specified positions constituted an offence in the premises. 

The Moderator overruled the objection. 

Professor Flinn objected to Dr. Webb's fourth question as inad- 
missible on the ground that it impugned Dr. Woodrow's sincerity 
and veracity in his answer to the third question. 

The Moderator overruled the objection. 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



641 



Professor Flinn objected to Dr. Webb's questions from 5-11 in- 
clusive, 14-16 inclusive, and to all of Rev. G. A. Blackburn's ques- 
tions, as inadmissible. His grounds of objection were all compre- 
hended under the proposition that the questions contained un- 
founded implications, and imposed tests of fellowship not warranted 
by law, nor by the circumstances of the case. 

These objections were all overruled by the Moderator. 

4. Professor Flinn's Complaint against Charleston 
Presbytery before the Synod of South Carolina, 
at yorkville. 

The Synod took up this case October 23, 1890, and the 
Synod sustains the action of the presbytery. A corres- 
pondent of the Charleston News and Courier, of date Oc- 
tober 25, 1890, who signs himself "J. S. B.," gives the 
following account of the case : 

Professor Flinn made his complaint in an able address of two 
"hours. He made a statement of the case as follows: 

While Dr. Woodrow was professor in the Theological Seminary, 
he was quasi representative of the Synod of Georgia in that institu- 
tion, and therefore had a right to pursue his work without the 
bounds of Augusta Presbytery, to which he belonged. When his 
connection became severed with the Seminary, it became his duty 
to apply for admission into the presbytery m whose limits he 
was then residing. This he did in compliance with the law before 
the expiration of one year, the prescribed time. This statement 
was made to show that Dr. Woodrow was complying only with the 
requirements of the church law bearing on the case. As soon as the 
Charleston Presbytery heard through the newspapers that Dr. 
Woodrow had secured a letter of dismission from the Augusta Pres- 
bytery, it at once, in anticipation of the event that Dr. Woodrow 
would apply for admission in that body, set to work to defeat the 
purpose. The Rev. R. A. Webb was selected to prepare questions 
for Dr. Woodrow's examination, and they were prepared in such a 
spirit that they could not be answered in self-respect. Not only had 
the questions been prepared beforehand, but the very resolutions 
rejecting the applicant were in a like manner prepared. The whole 
matter was cut and dried, and when it came up, Dr. Woodrow was 
rejected on the preestablished prejudice of the presbytery. 

Professor Flinn was replied to by the Rev. Dr. Webb in behalf of 
the presbytery. Dr. Webb's response was very able, but rather in 
the nature of an appeal to the Synod. Referring to one of the ques- 
tions, he drew a parallel as follows: 



642 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



"A man applies for admission into your family, with the right to 
sit down at your table, and a conversation like this ensues: 'You 
called me a liar a year ago; are you willing to retract it?' He 
says, 'I don't remember having called you a liar, but if I did, I am 
prepared to prove it.' Now, would you be willing to receive such a 
man into your family?" 

Dr. Thompson followed Dr. Webb, somewhat in the same line, in 
reference to all the abuse that Dr. Woodrow had heaped upon the 
presbytery, and appealed to the Synod, if the presbytery could, in 
self-respect, receive such a man into fellowship. 

Professor Flinn replied to Dr. Thompson. He only had a half 
hour, but answered every argument, as well as every appeal. He 
said that Dr. Woodrow's alleged strictures could not have been in- 
tended in the spirit in which they were taken by the presbytery. If 
Dr. Woodrow thought the presbytery was composed of liars, is it 
reasonable, he asked, to suppose that he would petition to be asso- 
ciated with it? 

Following Professor Flinn came five-minute speeches from such of 
the members as desired to express an opinion. Some of these ex- 
pressions were quite heated. 

While the debate was quite heated and feeling seemed to run 
high, the whole matter was conducted in a fair and manly manner. 
About twenty of the members took advantage of the five minutes' 
privilege, after which the vote was taken. It resulted in sustaining 
the presbytery, ayes 90, nays 52. 

A fair and competent reporter of the discussion fur- 
nishes the following brief outline of the arguments ad- 
vanced by the chief contestants : 

Professor Flinn began by appealing to the Digest for cases in- 
volving like legal principles with the case in question. He then pro- 
ceeded to show that, according to our law — Art. 277 — Dr. Woodrow 
was doing only his duty as a loyal minister of the church when he 
applied for admission to Charleston Presbytery. Had Dr. Wood- 
row, for any reason, failed to make this application, he would have 
been justly chargeable with neglecting a plain and imperative re- 
quirement of our law; he had no option in the matter. Moreover, 
Augusta Presbytery was bound by law to transfer Dr. Woodrow, 
unless a sufficient cause could be assigned for not doing so; and even 
if Augusta Presbytery had failed to do its duty, Charleston Presby- 
tery was by law obliged to assume jurisdiction over Dr. Woodrow, 
giving due notice to Augusta Presbytery of its act. The law was so 
plain that no one could fail to understand it. 

He did not question the right of Charleston Presbytery to ex- 
amine Dr. Woodrow, for this was the duty of that court under the- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



643 



law. The right to examine necessarily carries with it the right also 
to exclude — for sufficient cause. Charleston Presbytery has given us 
its reasons for rejecting Dr. Woodrow. There are eight reasons 
given. Do these give sufficient — that is, legal — cause for rejecting 
him? 

Professor Flinn then took up these reasons, one by one, and in his 
argument aimed to show their hollowness and insufficiency when 
viewed from the standpoint of the law, which should govern us in 
all cases. 

As to the charge of a "secularized life," made by the presbytery 
against Dr. Woodrow, Professor Flinn said that every one familiar 
with Dr. Woodrow's manner of life would testify that the only 
recreation he ever took was in a change of work. He had never seen 
Dr. Woodrow idle in his life, and he was sure that he — Flinn — spent 
as much, if not more, time in the year in gardening and other do~ 
mestic engagements, than Dr. Woodrow did in all these secular mat- 
ters under his directorship. The same might be said of other min- 
isters, who, in addition to their pastoral duties, had farms or 
schools or other matters of a secular kind claiming a part of their 
time and attention, etc. 

As to the objection based on Dr. Woodrow's views on evolution, 
Professor Flinn said that Dr. Woodrow had been fully tried by the 
church courts touching his orthodoxy; and whatever some might 
think of his doctrine, it had not affected his standing in the church. 
If his Avell-known views had not debarred him from membership in 
the General Assembly, our highest court, it was idle to make these 
views legal ground of exclusion from an inferior court. 

As to the personal reasons alleged by Charleston Presbytery, Pro- 
fessor Flinn claimed that the court had erred in taking this method 
to redress personal grievances. If such grievances existed, they 
ought to be settled as the law directs in all cases of personal 
offences. The court, when it charged personal grievances, was in 
law itself a person, and should conduct itself according to law, in 
Art. 165: "Moreover, if thy« brother shall trespass against thee," etc. 

We cannot continue the argument; but in the summing up, Pro- 
fessor Flinn regarded the rule of examination ( Art. 75), which says, 
"Ministers seeking admission to presbytery shall be examined on 
experimental religion, and also touching their views in theology and 
church government," as meaning substantially this : The presbytery 
has the right to examine into the moral conduct and orthodoxy of 
every applying minister. The evidence in the case does not show 
that Dr. Woodrow is immoral in life, or heretical in doctrine. 
Therefore, the Charleston Presbytery violated the law in rejecting 
him from its membership. 

Rev. Dr. Webb followed Professor Flinn. He also began by ap- 



MY LIFE AZSTD TIMES. 



pealing to the '"Digest" for some parallel case illustrative of the law. 
When he came to his argument, he claimed that Dr. Woodrow was 
not under obligation of law to seek an entrance into Charleston 
Presbytery. That this minister, although living within the jurisdic- 
tion of Charleston Presbytery for the last thirty years, had never, 
until lately, found out that his duty required him to transfer his 
membership from the Presbytery of Augusta to that of Charleston. 
That Dr. Woodrow's claim "that so long as he was a representative 
of Georgia Synod through his connection with the Theological Sem- 
inary, it was proper that he should belong to a Georgia presbytery, 
but now, having ceased to be a professor in the Seminary, there was 
no longer a reason for his non-compliance with the law" — that this 
was offset by the fact that Dr. Woodrow, by reason of his being edi- 
tor of the Southern Presbyterian, held a kind of catholic relation to 
the church, and therefore he might legally be in one presbytery as in 
another. That Dr. Woodrow must have known that his attempted 
entrance into Charleston Presbytery would excite opposition, and 
therefore he knowingly and deliberately had disturbed the peace of 
the church. Dr. Webb said that self-protection, honor, consistency, 
obliged the presbytery to reject this applicant. 

The speaker held that the presbytery had the inalienable right to 
determine who should be members of the body, and, if we under- 
stood him, he claimed that presbytery had the exclusive right, and 
was not subject, in such a matter, to the overruling of a superior 
court. When he came to consider the reasons assigned by Charles- 
ton Presbytery for its action, in justification of the first reason, Dr. 
Webb appealed to Paul's direction to Timothy, "No man that war- 
reth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life," etc. As to Dr. 
Woodrow's theory of evolution, the church, said Dr. Webb, had con- 
demned it by every species of decision. The hard things Dr. Wood- 
row said about the presbytery were very hard to bear, etc. He ap- 
pealed to the Synod not to force on an unwilling presbytery a man 
who was so objectionable in the many ways enumerated. The peace 
of the presbytery and of the church made it desirable that Dr. 
Woodrow should not be thrust into their body, etc 

Dr. Thompson, who divided the allotted time with Dr. Webb, was 
the next speaker. He said, in his opening remarks, that he would 
attempt to confine his words within limits of strictest propriety, 
but accustomed, as he had been, in the late war to the position of a 
cavalry leader, his impetuosity might lead him to transgress the 
limits he assigned himself, etc. He soon launched out, and gave, 
with impassioned vehemence, his objections to having Dr. Woodrow 
received into the presbytery. These objections were almost wholly 
along the line of personal grievances, in view of the hard things 
Dr. Woodrow had said or published against the Charleston Presby- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



645 



tery, he was sure that the Synod would not force him upon them, 
etc. 

Professor Flinn closed in a half-hour speech, in which he reviewed 
the argument of the respondents, and attempted to show that the 
personal reasons presented were not sufficient to justify the action of 
the presbytery. In a word, they were not recognized in our law as 
the ground of excluding a minister from membership in a presbytery. 

The roll was now called, and every member of Synod allowed five 
minutes for expressing his opinion. Some stirring, short speeches 
were made. Some of the brethren did not endorse Charleston Pres- 
bytery's reasons for rejecting Dr. Woodrow, but they were unwill- 
ing, for prudential reasons — the peace of the presbytery, and the 
good of all concerned — to force Dr. Woodrow on an unwilling body. 
Others thought the question of law was the matter brought before 
us by the complaint, and this was all that we ought to consider. The 
surest and shortest way to peace was in following the law ourselves, 
and causing others to do likewise. 

This complaint consumed a long time, but the Synod gave it a 
very patient hearing. The spirit in which the whole debate was had 
was excellent, and there was an evident desire on the part of each 
speaker to refrain from all offensive personalities. 

Theological Seminary. 
This institution, as usual, claimed the attention of Synod. Rev. 
T. C. Whaling offered a resolution looking to a change in the present 
policy of the Seminary, so that students might be allowed to attend 
Dr. Woodrow's lectures in the University, except when forbidden to 
do so by the presbyteries having authority over them. He made a 
very earnest speech and gave cogent reasons in support of his reso- 
lution, feeling sure that, if this were done, we all could join in a 
more hearty support of the Seminary. Rev. Mr. Blackburn spoke 
in opposition to the resolution saying, in substance, we have gone 
as far as we intend to go in this matter. He then, upon the con- 
clusion of his speech, called the question, which being sustained, no 
further debate on the resolution was allowed. The resolution offered 
by Mr. Whaling was then rejected. . . . 

The Xew Plan of Government for the Theological Seminary. 

There were two reports on this new constitution, or plan of gov- 
ernment. One recommended the adoption, with the modifications 
made by the Synod of Georgia. The other report, presented by Rev. 
Mr. Mills, approved of some changes made in the revised plan, but 
disapproved of the proposed increase in the number of directors, 
and their distribution among the Synods. The board was, in his 
judgment, already large enough to secure efficiency. 



646 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



The new constitution was adopted by a majority vote. If the 
finances of the Seminary will bear this increased strain, we suppose 
no harm will come of it; but some of us think that the increased 
expenditure is a useless waste of money. It may be a matter of 
interest to some to know that, under the new constitution, a pro- 
fessor who has been ejected by the board has no appeal to the con- 
trolling Synods. J. S. C. 

Professor Flinn did not prosecute his complaint to the 
ensuing Assembly at Birmingham in 1891, of which he 
gave notice ; but when the motion was made to approve 
the records of the Synod, the Rev. W. H. Workman, com- 
missioner from Harmony Presbytery, objected, pointing 
■out why they should not be approved, but his vote was 
the only one against apjuoval. 

Subsequently a memorial to the Synod of South Caro- 
lina, meeting at Abbeville, on the subject of Charleston 
Presbytery's rejection of Dr. Woodrow, which was refer- 
red to a committee, was laid on the table along with the 
committee's report urging the Synod's action respecting 
the same. 

At the same Synod resolutions offered by Pev. J. S. 
Cozby on the subject of the Seminary boycott of Dr. 
Woodrow were also laid on the table ; and no further 
public proceedings have since taken place on that subject. 

When the Assembly at Birmingham had thus con- 
firmed the action of the Synod of South Carolina respect- 
ing Dr. Woodrow's rejection, he so reported to his Pres- 
bytery of Augusta. He maintained the view that he was 
subject to the jurisdiction of that presbytery, but not 
entitled to act as a member of it, and so, of course, as to 
the Synod of Georgia. After a while the Augusta Presby- 
tery overtured the Assembly at Xashville, in 1894, as to 
the matter. The answer of the Assembly is found on page 
234 of their minutes, and is as follows : 

The report of the Committee on Bills and Overtures on the over- 
ture from Augusta Presbytery anent the relations of Dr. Woodrow 
to said presbytery was taken from the docket, was adopted, and is 
as follows: 

"The Presbytery of Augusta respectfully overtures the General 
Assembly for instruction in the following case: 

"The Rev. James Woodrow, D. D., being a member of this presby- 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



647 



tery, but residing in the bounds of Charleston Presbytery, obtained 
a letter of dismission from the former to the latter; he presented 
this letter of dismission to Charleston Presbytery, and his applica- 
tion for membership was rejected. He remains, of course, after 
Charleston Presbytery rejected his application for membership, 
under the jurisdiction of Augusta Presbytery; but, until he has 
formally returned the letter of dismission to this presbytery, is he en- 
titled to all the rights and privileges of membership ? If it is neces- 
sary that he should return his letter of dismission to Augusta Pres- 
bytery in order to be entitled to the rights and privileges of active 
membership, is he prevented from doing so by the law of our church. 
Par. 277, requiring that a minister shall be a member of the pres- 
bytery in the bounds of which he resides? 

"M. C. Britt, Stated Clerk:' 

Beg leave to report that, inasmuch as a minister who has a letter 
of dismission from his own presbytery to another presbytery re- 
mains under the jurisdiction of the presbytery from which he was 
dismissed until he has been formally received by the presbytery to 
which he was dismissed (Book of Church Order, Rules of Discipline, 
Chap. XV., Sec. v., Par. 280), he is entitled to all the rights and 
privileges of membership in the presbytery from which he was dis- 
missed; and it is the judgment of your committee that Par. 277 
does not forbid him to return his letter. 

"This meant clearly," says Dr. Woodrow, "that the 
rule 277 does not mean anything, and, if it does, that it 
may be disregarded; and- that one does not need to hold 
membership in the presbytery within the bounds of which 
he lives. All this is directly in the teeth of the constitu- 
tion; but, as obedience to the decision as to a matter of 
order did not seem to me to involve sin, I obeyed. The 
answer involves this, that I may belong to a presbytery 
where I do not live. As South Carolina Presbytery is 
nearer than Augusta, instead of returning my letter of 
dismission to Augusta, I presented it to South Carolina, 
where I was received with open arms. I pointed out 
then, and have often done so since, that, in my opinion, 
the Assembly's answer is as directly opposed to the con- 
stitution as anything could be. I was received by South 
Carolina Presbvtery in September, 1894, at Williams- 
ton." 

Thus ends my history of the evolution controversy. 



648 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



Comments. 

Having thus detailed patiently and fully, and I hope 
fairly and impartially, a history of the evolution contro- 
versy in the Presbyterian Church in the United States, I 
will now proceed, as is common with historians, to set 
forth my reflections on the facts detailed. 

The first comment I have to make is that the reader 
must be ready to pronounce the hypothesis of evolution, 
and Dr. Woodrow along with it, overwhelmingly de- 
feated; because, with the exception of the Synod at 
Greenville with its original Board of Directors ; the 
Presbytery of Augusta at Bethany; in some sense the 
General Assembly at Baltimore, and, lastly, the Synod 
at Greenwood, every ecclesiastical body that has had 
to do with this question has condemned the hypothesis by 
large majorities. Three General Assemblies, a number 
of different synods and presbyteries, counting from Octo- 
ber, 1884, down to the fall of 1890, uttered their voices 
more or less distinctly against this new theory and its 
professor, while a great array of religious newspapers 
levelled their batteries against it. There was but one 
Presbyterian newspaper, so far as I can remember, not to 
speak of the Professor's own organ, that favored evolution 
at all. 

As one looks over this field of battle at the close of the 
combat, he discovers one little company completely 
routed. These were the men who had been willing to give 
natural science a fair chance to speak out of her newly 
opened book. The observer also perceives the victorious 
hosts of anti-evolution marching triumphantly over the 
whole field. But we must bear in mind what our im- 
mortal J ohn of Geneva truly said, that "votes ought to be 
weighed, not counted.' 7 The conventional rule which says 
the majority must govern is unavoidably the necessary 
one, and therefore it is a good rule ; but none can doubt 
that it often makes the wrong triumph over the right. 
Calvin again well says, "Incertum scindi in studio, con- 
traria vvlgus." "The uncertain crowd is split up into 
contradictory purposes." What big crowd of men ever 
deals wisely with an exciting question ? 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



649 



If truth is at the bottom of a well, no crowd can make 
it out. The common sense of mankind is a high author- 
ity, but not on questions liable to be answered in ignor- 
ance or by prejudice. Truth in its highest and purest 
sense has never been held except by the minority. Gen- 
erally speaking, the majority follows its leader unthink- 
ingly ; but generally speaking, there are a few who think 
for themselves, and so break away and become the mi- 
nority. Who is most likely to be right, the one man who 
leads the crowd, or a number who can think as well as he, 
and so constitute the minority ? 

Apart from all this, however, may it not be truly said 
that no body of one hundred or one hundred and fifty 
men that ever met can be competent to take up a ques- 
tion that is new to them, as well as complicated, and give 
a wise decision after hearing simply a few hours' debate 
by earnest speakers on both sides. This may seem to in- 
validate our General Assembly's decisions. I reply, that 
the questions to be decided by the Assembly are commonly 
not new to the body ; still it may well be doubted whether 
our Presbyterian courts should be so constituted as to be- 
come always larger as they rise in the scope and weight of 
their authority. There is safety in a multitude of coun- 
sellors, but certainly not in proportion to the number of 
the multitude. We have now some thirteen synods. An 
Assembly composed of two presbyters from each of these 
synods would be a safer appellate court than one composed 
of two, and sometimes four, commissioners from each of 
our seventy-six presbyteries. 

The next comment which I have to make is, that it is of 
comparatively small consequence to the church whether 
the hypothesis of evolution is true or false; but that 
which is of the very greatest consequence is the lesson 
which this controversy holds up to the church. In several 
past ages she has had to learn this lesson ; but it seems to 
be one easily forgotten, and it has had to be repeated in 
this generation. The lesson is, that the mission of the 
church is to conserve and proclaim God's word in the scrip- 
tures, and outside of what this involves she has no author- 
ity at all. As jurisdiction in matters political or civil is 
expressly forbidden to her, it is a plain inference that she 



650 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES 



is not to enter into the domain of natural science. Her 
proper sphere is large enough, and she must not seek to 
widen it by entering into any other. To teach what man 
is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires 
of man, is surely work enough for all her energies. It 
might well fill an angel's hand, and it did fill our Sav- 
iour's hands when he was on earth. In no age of the 
church, even the very best, have the ministry or the pres- 
byterial courts of the church ever come up to the full dis- 
charge of the work committed to her. The whole counsel 
of God, which is to guide her, is either expressly written 
down or deducible therefrom, and to this nothing is at 
any time to be added. 

faithful minister of the gospel will ever disgrace his 
pulpit by preaching anything but the gospel of Christ. 
He has no time to preach anything else. Xo General 
Assembly that ever sat has adequately discharged its 
proper duties in the time allotted to it. It has no time to 
give to anything outside its appointed sphere. Xot only 
our doctrine, but our order, is matter of revelation. Jesus 
is King in Zion, and does not leave to men the organiza- 
tion of his kingdom on earth. When our Beloved planted 
a Yineyard in a very fruitful hill, he also fenced it. The 
fencing was as important as the planting. Presbyterian 
church government is jure divino. All the essentials of it 
are expressly found in scripture, while all the circum- 
stantials are provided for in the rule to do all things de- 
cently and in order. We can give scripture for a church 
session of ''elders in every church," for "an eldership in 
every city" consisting of several church sessions : and 
for a synod or assembly as a high court of appeals. When 
we come by divine permission to arrange the circumstan- 
tials decently and in order, we give a definite and precise 
sphere to each court and the jurisdiction of these courts 
is limited by the express provisions of the constitution, 
each court exercising exclusive original jurisdiction over 
all matters belonging to it, while yet the lower courts are 
all subject to the review and control of the higher courts 
in regular gradation ; but the four modes in which alone 
a case may be carried from a lower to a higher court are 



CONTROVERSIES OE SCIENCE. 



651 



carefully and specifically described in a whole chapter of 
our Discipline. 

In view of all these statements, I must be allowed to 
say that if the case which has so disturbed our church had 
been left to the original jurisdiction of the Presbytery of 
Augusta, and then carried up, according to our constitu- 
tion, to the Synod of Georgia, and thence up to the Gen- 
eral Assembly which met at Augusta in 1886, our order 
had not been violated, nor the peace of our church so much 
disturbed. Instead of these regular proceedings, over- 
tures from seven different presbyteries to the General As- 
sembly for in thesi deliverances, and those deliverances 
relating to a question of science, are welcomed by the As- 
sembly at Augusta, and a special committee of reference 
appointed on the very first day, before any of these over- 
tures had come to hand, and along with this remarkable 
proceeding by that Assembly, "a free fight" instituted all 
over the church, presbyteries and synods vieing with each 
other for a superserviceable participation in the discus- 
sion. 

Again, it is fundamental to the Presbyterian system 
that every one of its courts is a presbytery, composed of 
the same elements, viz., presbyters that rule and presby- 
ters that also teach, and possessed inherently of the same 
kinds of rights and powers. Accordingly, while it is the 
duty of every Assembly to review and correct the pro- 
ceedings of all its synods, and the duty of each synod to 
review and correct the proceedings of all its presbyteries, 
and the duty of every presbytery to review and correct 
the proceedings of all its sessions, yet this duty of review 
is confined by law, on the part of each court, only to the 
court next below it, and so the books of every lower court 
must be sent up in due order and at proper time to the 
court next above it. Thus does the Presbyterian system 
provide for a legitimate and regular oversight and control 
of the proceedings of each court by the court immediately 
above it. But, on the other hand, if the Assembly can 
resolve questions of doctrine and discipline, so can the 
classical, and even parochial, presbytery. Every session, 
presbytery and synod should appoint a committee to ex- 
amine the published proceedings of the higher courts, 



652 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



and report to the proper court every action of the higher 
courts which requires the attention of the lower bodies. 
"It is a beautiful system/' said Dr. Thornwell once to me. 
"if Presbyterians only really believed in it themselves, 
which, alas ! they do not ; and therefore it does not pro- 
duce its proper effectual results." The system is a di- 
vinely revealed one. There is life in every part of it, and 
the life blood ought to flow throughout the whole body. 
There ought to be healthful inter-action between each part 
and all its fellow parts; and so it is the plain right of 
either the session, presbytery or synod to testify its judg- 
ment of whatever the preceding Assembly may have said 
or done. Although that General Assembly has given a 
final decision, which has to be obeyed, still it is the right, 
and may be the duty, of these lower courts to put on record 
their assent or dissent respecting the same. Much more, 
then, does it belong to every General Assembly to look 
into the proceedings of its predecessor, and bear testi- 
mony against any error respecting doctrine or discipline 
into which it may have fallen. 

But when two presbyteries overtured the Assembly at 
St. Louis, in 1887, to know whether it was a just claim, 
made and acted on by its predecessor at Augusta, in 1886, 
that our Assembly possesses original jurisdiction over all 
theological seminaries and other like corporations, and 
over all schemes for religious work begun by the courts 
below, and over all office-bearers of the church, to deter- 
mine which of these shall be the professors, directors and 
agents of these institutions, and to direct when either 
of such shall be expelled from his office, and what kind of 
persons shall be their successors, that Assembly gave only 
the following answer: "Touching the subject matter re- 
ferred to in these overtures, this Assembly declines to 
formulate any detailed explanation of the acts of the last 
Assembly, as any such statement, however expressed, 
could only be regarded as a new deliverance on the same 
subjects, which this Assembly does not feel called upon 
to make." 

Now, I ask, was this "the clear-cut decision of an As- 
sembly," which Dr. Armstrong told us at Augusta was 
best obtainable by overtures ? Was it not, rather, a very 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



653 



clear and intentional evasion of the question asked ? Why 
did not the Assembly at St. Louis speak out plainly and 
say, either that it stood by the decisions of the Assembly 
at Augusta, or else that that Assembly, on the ninth day 
of its proceedings, had been led to make unconstitutional 
claims for our highest court? 

"Original jurisdiction in relation to ministers of the 
gospel pertains exclusively to the presbytery, and in rela- 
tion to other church members to the session. 7 ' (See Rules, 
Chap, v.. Sec. 1.) The meaning of this rule is, that 
neither the synod nor the General Assembly, being our 
highest appellate courts, can originate a process of dis- 
cipline with any minister ; nor can either of these, nor yet 
the presbytery, begin the discipline of any elder, deacon, 
or any other church member. If any minister be guilty 
of an "offence," it is the presbytery exclusively that has 
authority to try him ; and if any elder, deacon, or other 
church member, it is the session exclusively which must 
begin to deal with him. Xo case of discipline whatever 
can commence in any synod, much less in the General 
Assembly. 

According to these provisions, the presbytery does not 
meddle with what concerns a particular session, unless 
regularly brought up for its examination ; its sphere is to 
oversee the sessions as they report to it, and to take care 
of the affairs that are common to a number of them, 
which no one of these lowest courts can manage. So the 
synod does not intrude into the business of any presbytery 
unless appealed to, but has charge of what is common to 
several presbyteries, and which no one of them is able to 
direct. In like manner the Assembly leaves each synod 
to do its business, and each presbytery to attend to its own 
duties, while it looks after the general interests of the 
whole church. 

Now, these principles, by which the power of the Gen- 
eral Assembly is limited, are to be found imbedded in the 
old Form of Government and Discipline as they were 
before we adopted our revised Form and Rules. But the 
reader will observe that our Book of Church Order gives 
to them very far greater distinctness, and makes the most 
emphatic utterance of them. And there is a bit of history 



654 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



to be recounted here. Whilst our church was busy with 
its work of revision, there occurred, on the part of the 
Northern Assembly, something which took our people by 
surprise, and impressed us all with the propriety of more 
express provisions for guarding against assumptions of 
power by Presbyterian high courts. The Synod of Ken- 
tucky having not yet severed its connection with the 
Northern Church, the Presbytery of Louisville sent Dr. 
Stuart Robinson and Dr. Samuel R. Wilson (clara ac 
venerabilia nomina), with Ruling Elders Wickliffe and 
Hardin, as its commissioners to the General Assembly at 
St. Louis, in 1866. These brethren had been considered 
disloyal to the United States government during its war 
with the Confederacy ; and for this, as soon as they ap- 
peared on the floor of the patriotic ecclesiastical assem- 
blage, that body proceeded summarily to eject them. In 
vain did they present their commissions, all in due order, 
from the Louisville Presbytery. Loyalty to Ca?sar on 
the part of the church was the idea dominant, and the 
Louisville commissioners were disloyal, and ipso facto 
were unfit to take their seats in that high court, and they 
were thrust out. Upon them, and upon their presbytery 
alike, the heavy foot of the Assembly was set, and they 
and it alike despoiled of their constitutional rights. Our 
church at once took the alarm. At that period we had 
never seen the General Assembly so boldly usurp au- 
thority, and it wore a frightful look. We all thought then 
that such a proceeding, by a body constituted as the As- 
sembly is, was outrageous. And precisely for the purpose 
of guarding against the like amongst ourselves, there were 
immediately introduced into our constitution those ex- 
press provisions. 

Our Assembly, then, is to superintend "such matters 
as concern the whole church." Well, heresy in a minister 
concerns the whole church. Yes, but the constitution 
commits his trial for heresy exclusively to his presbytery, 
until such time as it shall lawfully come first before the 
synod, and then, as to the court of last resort, before the 
Assembly ; and according to our constitution, there are 
provided four modes, and only four, in which "a cause 
may be carried from a lower to a higher court." These 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



655 



are general review and control, reference, appeal, and 
complaint ; and our Book prescribes exactly how each of 
these modes is to be employed. But, in the case we are 
now considering at the Augusta Assembly, neither of these 
modes was resorted to, but a new one was needed and was 
devised ! 

Again : The reader of this volume, if he will look back 
to the history of the Old and New School controversy, 
will find the account of a flagrant outrage by the General 
Assembly of 1836, which was dominated by the New 
School party of that time. This was one of the many 
ways in which the so-called Plan of Union — better named 
the Plan of Contention — had tormented the Presbyterian 
church of those times for more than thirty years. I refer 
to the creation by that Assembly of what was appropri- 
ately designated an "Elective Affinity Presbytery" in the 
Synod of Philadelphia, and against its remonstrances. 
This consisted of a company of ministers and churches, 
pointed out by name, thrown together because of their 
doctrinal sympathies and irrespective of geographical 
boundaries. Then, to place this body beyond the reach 
of synodical action, it was erected, with two others of like 
sentiment, into the Synod of Delaware. Here was not 
only an asylum provided for men unsound in the faith, 
but presbyteries were created to license candidates who 
would everywhere else be rejected. The reader will see 
at a glance how different an "Elective Affinity Presby- 
tery" is from the presbytery described in the old Form 
of Government, as well as in our Revised Form. Pule 
72—1. makes the presbytery consist of all the ministers 
and one ruling elder from each church within a certain 
district. The geographical boundary is an essential part 
of the definition. No presbytery could have part of its 
ministers or churches resident within the bounds of an- 
other presbytery. This is an essential principle of Pres- 
byterian Church government. This principle, however, 
is sometimes modified in its operation by another, which 
was very strongly developed in our Southern church by 
the elder controversy. That controversy taught our 
church that the ruling elder is as necessary a member of 
our church courts as the teaching elder, and has made us 



656 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



very averse to too much of what is called clerical influ- 
ence. The words "clergy," "clergyman" and "clerical" 
are not Presbyterian terms; but we insist that the min- 
istry shall not overbalance the other branch of our popu- 
lar representation. Accordingly, when, for example, half 
a dozen ministers are placed by an Assembly or a synod 
to do its work within the bounds of some presbytery, it is 
not considered proper that they all be clustered together 
as members of that presbytery, but each one is expected 
to hold his former presbyterial relations. 

The geographical boundary is seen to be very important 
when we apply it to the private members of the church. 
Hundreds of our church members every year pass away 
from both the communion and the oversight which all 
Presbyterians appreciate so highly. They migrate to 
some new home, and fail to carry any certificate of their 
church membership with them. ~Not a church, perhaps, 
in our whole country but has lost members from its roll 
without knowing what became of them, and not a church, 
perhaps, in our whole country but has Presbyterian peo- 
ple coming to dwell within its territory who owe no sub- 
mission to its watch and care. 

The importance, therefore, of Pule 277-11. of our Dis- 
cipline is very manifest. It requires every church mem- 
ber or officer removing his residence beyond the bounds of 
the court which has jurisdiction over him to apply for the 
transfer of his relations. It also requires the court from 
whose bounds he has removed itself to make the transfer 
if he neglects it for twelve months. If both neglect this 
duty, the court into whose bounds he has moved is re- 
quired to make this transfer, giving due notice to the 
court that has been left. 

Eow, when Dr. Woodrow ceased to be a professor at 
Columbia, this rule, of course, applied to him. The 
Presbytery of Augusta dismissed him as a member in 
good standing to the Presbytery of Charleston, which re- 
fused to receive him by a vote of seventeen to six. Pro- 
fessor Plinn complained to the Synod of South Carolina 
of this violation of the rule in our Discipline. The synod 
voted down his complaint by a vote of ninety to fifty-two. 
He gave notice of complaint to the next Assembly, at 



CONTROVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



657 



Birmingham, but failed to prosecute it ; but that Assem- 
bly approved the records of the Synod of South Carolina 
on this point, with but one negative vote. The Presbytery 
of Augusta made a final appeal to the Assembly at Xash- 
ville, in 1894, and that Assembly gave an answer which, 
in the' circumstances of the case, which were fully ex- 
plained to it, signified plainly that Eule 277 does not 
mean anything, and if it does, it may be disregarded. 
Here, then, is a presbytery, and then a synod, and then 
a General Assembly, and then finally another General As- 
sembly, all declaring that our Rules of Order have no 
binding force. 

Here, then, is the lesson which this controversy teaches 
our church. Every one of her courts that ever sat has had 
abundance of legitimate work, and never has been able 
adequately to overtake and fully discharge its duty in the 
premises ; and yet her courts will often take up a matter 
about which they cannot have anything lawfully to say. 
They will get excited in the discussion of this subject. 
They will assume authority not belonging to them, and, 
so assuming, they will do injustice to a brother, and they 
will flagrantly and repeatedly violate their own rules. 
Here have I set forth proceedings by the church constitut- 
ing a precedent, which, in some later chapters of our his- 
tory, will be appealed to, especially by our General As- 
sembly, for some additional usurpation of larger and more 
unconstitutional authority. The lesson of this contro- 
versy should be well studied by our church. 

My third comment on this history is, that there is now 
no intelligent man, whether believer or unbeliever in the 
Bible, but acknowledges that the history of this globe an- 
tedates very far that of any of its present inhabitants. 
There are also a great company of intelligent men. of both 
classes, who hold that the antecedent history of this earth 
is on some points traceable through immeasurable pe- 
riods, and is written by the hand of God himself, clear 
enough for them to read. God has, therefore, written two 
books for men to read : but it is a most significant fact 
that neither one of these books makes any reference to 
the other, and that while one of them has been progres- 
sively made known to men during many past centuries, 



658 



MY LIFE AISTD TIMES. 



the pages of the other have been opened only of recent 
years. It is true the Bible says God is known by the 
works of his hands. Moses tells us that he created the 
sun and the moon and also the stars. David says, "The 
heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament 
showeth his handiwork." The stars, he says, have no 
speech, yet their words are heard to the end of the world. 
The Psalmist also frequently describes the terrible 
storms of thunder and lightning, in which God speaks to 
men. Solomon, the wisest of men, spake of trees, from 
the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop 
that springeth out of the wall; he spake also of beasts, 
and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. Peter 
tells of the world that once was, having perished, being 
overflowed with water, but says that the world that now 
is, is kept in store to be destroyed by fire. Paul says that 
the invisible things of him from the creation of the world 
are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are- 
made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that the 
heathen are without excuse. But Moses and David di- 
rected the gaze of man up to the stars, and it entered not 
into the mind of either of these to speak of what is writ- 
ten in the depths of the earth. Solomon's studies of na- 
ture were evidently confined to the surface of the earth. 
Peter does not tell us that the final conflagration is to 
come from within; while Paul only says that God's 
visible works clearly pointed at his invisible power and 
Godhead. Mankind have been dwelling on this globe 
for at least six thousand years, and from the very begin- 
ning God has been communicating with them, but only 
about his law and their duty. His written word sets 
forth to men only their own apostasy and his wondrous 
and glorious plan for their reconciliation to him. He 
puts into the hand of his church an inspired volume, out 
of which she is to teach men all they need to know at 
present about him and their own duty, but nothing else. 
About the countless mysteries of nature and the secrets 
of science he gives her not one word of instruction, nor 
can she teach men a word on those subjects. 

What a significant fact it is, that for at least fifty-five 
centuries all God's instructions to man related to the one 



C0NTE0VEESIES OF SCIENCE. 



659 



theme, our ruin by the first Adam and our redemption by 
the second, and that only some four hundred years ago 
the Creator thought proper to let mankind, but not the 
church, find out that the world is not a flat plane, but a 
round globe. Meanwhile, at least five great world em- 
pires had risen and successively ruled, till one by one they 
perished ; and great systems of philosophy had risen, and 
were taught by deep, if not always right, thinkers ; and 
yet the earth on which they dwelt was altogether unknown 
to any of these, even as to its external shape. The same 
is true as to the heavenly bodies. These deep thinkers 
considered the earth to be the centre of all these stars, and 
not until the dawn of the Reformation was it made known 
to men, but not the church, by the Creator that the earth 
was a mere planet of our solar system, revolving daily on 
its own axis, and also revolving round the sun, and that 
the starry heavens presented to their eye millions of great 
revolving globes. They all believed, and even the in- 
spired Psalmist was allowed by the Almighty so to rep- 
resent the case, as that the sun was as a bridegroom com- 
ing every morning out of his chamber, and rejoicing like 
a strong man to run his daily race round this little earth. 

But how or through what teacher did these facts of 
science come at last to be made known to men ? Did the 
Creator send a prophet or an apostle to make them 
known ? Did such a messenger communicate them to the 
church, that the church might teach men these things ? 
No, indeed ! The church that then was, bitterly de- 
nounced these discoveries of science. She compelled 
Galileo by force to deny what he had found out to be true, 
and poor Copernicus only published what he had found 
out when sure that death would immediately deliver him 
from the Inquisition. Why was not the church made the 
discoverer of the new chemistry? Why was not steam 
revealed to the church, and electricity, in all their won- 
derful power and adaptations ? It is in no sense the prov- 
ince of the church to make discoveries or inventions in the 
kingdom of nature ; hers is a different sphere, although 
her sons, as such, are privileged as individual men to 
study art and science, and proclaim what they have 
learned. 



660 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



Is it any wonder now that not till some fifty or sixty 
years ago was the church allowed to understand that days 
in the first chapter of Genesis did not mean periods of 
twenty-four hours each, and is it any wonder if she has 
remained ignorant till this day that the dust out of which 
Adam was created was not necessarily the humble and 
insignificant material which we call by that name ? 

A fourth comment. Here is something presented to 
our thoughtful consideration. The Bible does not teach, 
and was not given to teach, science, but something alto- 
gether different from science, viz., religion; and yet the 
Creator allows men who may not at all be his people to be 
the first to find out some of the secrets of science, that is, 
of nature. In our own age a great and long-hidden secret 
is allowed to be found out by one not a Christian himself, 
nor the son of a Christian, but quite the contrary. A 
revelation written on rocks is shown first to him. As 
usual, the church at once denounces as infidelity what he 
found out and proclaimed, and confirms her denunciation 
from the fact that he is himself an unbeliever. But on 
what ground does she denounce this new hypothesis, to- 
gether with its author, as infidel ? Not because it conflicts 
with revealed doctrines of the Bible, but that it is con- 
trary to their translation of one special statement con- 
tained in very few words. 

Searching to discover what makes men so very fierce in 
their condemnation of and opposition to this newly- 
discovered truth, I have concluded it is pride. Shakes- 
peare makes Cardinal Wolsey say to his servant : "Crom- 
well, I charge thee, fling away ambition ; by that sin fell 
the angels.' 7 Now, ambition is pride's twin sister. If 
we accept Milton's suggestion, we shall be ready to admit 
that what touches our pride is somewhat like that which 
stirred the same passion in the evil angels. He makes 
Satan, addressing his fallen hosts, tell them : 

"There went a fame in heaven, that he ere long 
Intended to create ... a generation whom 
His choice regard should favor equal to the sons of heaven." 

What those evil spirits could not bear was that the new 
race of men, "though less in power and excellence, were, 



CONTKOVERSIES OF SCIENCE. 



661 



like to us, the sons of heaven, and were to have an equal 
share of heaven's favor." And just so the men of this 
nineteenth century are mortified at the assertion of its 
being probably true that the body of our first father had 
close relationship to the lower animals. 

But, unquestionably, man, as to his body, is an animal. 
The whole structure of his frame, every organ, every 
function proves this, and we are therefore allied plainly 
and distinctly through our bodies to the lower animals. 
They are our poor kin. Accordingly, we are ashamed of 
them; and yet they are the handiwork of our glorious 
Creator as truly as our own bodies. Upon many of them 
he bestows as much grace and beauty as belongs to the 
human race. In them, as in every other thing which he 
created, we see much to admire. His divine skill and 
divine goodness he portrays in them all, whether brute or 
bird or fish or reptile, and there is not one of them which 
man, who is only one of God's other creatures, has any 
right to despise. Look at the faithful dog, man's inti- 
mate friend in every age. Look at the patient, laborious 
ox. Look at the gentle sheep. Look at the honest, docile, 
beautiful, noble horse. Look at any one of the brute crea- 
tion, and behold in it God's handiwork, and let your 
grateful reverence for him subjugate your pride of race. 

But, what is more, it is by these despised kin of ours 
our life from day to day is supported. Look at that man 
who weighs two hundred pounds. What is all that flesh 
of his ? It is just beef, mutton and pork. From the day 
he ceased to get his nourishment from his mother's breasts 
he has been fed from the bodies of his poor kin. Can it 
be denied that he is closely related to them ? How foolish 
and how shameful that pride of his which makes him deny 
the relationship ! 

But, most of all, there is not one of all these our fellow 
creatures but obeys, and from the beginning of its being 
always has obeyed, every one of God's laws. It is only 
man that has sinned, become an apostate like the fallen 
angels, and yet, just like the fallen angels, he is too proud 
to acknowledge the comparative position of his body 
amongst the creatures of God. 

The last comment I shall offer on this history relates to 



662 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



what seems to me a very small question, unhappily mag- 
nified into a very great one. That question is, what does 
the word "dust" necessarily mean. If it is true, as Dr. 
Lyon said (see Southern Presbyterian Review, Vol. XII., 
page 188 et seq.), that there is a revelation by God in his 
works as well as in his word — a revelation not of his grace 
and mercy, but of his goodness, wisdom and power — and 
that this revelation which God makes of himself in na- 
ture is just as authoritative, just as infallible in its utter- 
ances, as far as they go, and just as much needs a com- 
petent expounder, as that other great volume which is 
called the Bible; and if this revelation which God has 
written in rock seems to prove that Adam's body was 
formed out of some already organized material, and not 
out of what we call dust, then it seems to me that this 
testimony should have great weight in determining what 
is the true meaning of the Hebrew word aphar. It 
certainly gives a good ground for questioning whether 
we have that word correctlv translated in our English 
Bible. 

It has been very common in this controversy to set forth 
one view as worthy to be accepted because honorable to 
Adam's body, but the other as deserving of our rejection 
and abhorrence, as dishonoring to the bodily frame of our 
first ancestor. Where lies the superiority? If the Al- 
mighty chose to make use, in forming Adam's body, of 
organic matter descending from a long line of animal 
creatures, the indirect work of his own hand, how shall we 
dare represent it as dishonorable ? His work is always 
honorable. All the glory there is in our being created at 
all is that we are the work of God's hands ; what material 
he chose to employ is of no importance whatsoever. 

It has always seemed to me very shocking, as bordering 
upon profaneness, for any to insist that there is no other 
possible way in which we can lawfully conceive of the 
precise material of which Adam's body was created by 
the Almighty than that he must needs have taken some 
dirt of the ground, whether clay or sand or both, or 
whether literal minute dust, and proceeded to operate 
with this particular material, as if he was at all dependent 
on the material used in the construction of man. Can we 



CONTROVERSIES OE SCIENCE. 



663 



be so sure of the meaning here of that one Hebrew word 
which we translate by the English word dust, as to war- 
rant ns in thus limiting our Creator ? 

Let us look at the one hundred and third Psalm. The 
thirteenth and fourteenth verses say: "Like as a father 
pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear 
him. Lor he knoweth our frame ; he remembereth that 
we are dust." The idea is, that God pities us, knowing 
our weakness ; he knows our frame and of what he has 
made us ; he remembers that we are dust. The statement 
is of the whole family of man. Must we understand that 
all men, as they now exist, are literal dust ? If not, why 
must we understand that in Genesis ii. 7, the Lord God 
formed man out of literal dust ? Our Saviour says he was 
a foolish man that built his house upon the sand. Will 
dust prove a more solid foundation than sand for those 
who build on that word their showy edifice of scripture 
exposition and logical argumentation ? 

We know that there are various lawful interpretations 
of the Hebrew word aphar. Among them is the English 
word "dust." But it will not do to insist that this par- 
ticular interpretation, or any other, of the Hebrew word 
must always be understood literally, or that it must 
always be understood in one unvarying sense all through 
the scriptures. Our Saviour said, "These shall go away 
into everlasting fire." Must we understand literal fire ? 
Perhaps there is not one of us who would insist that Ave 
must so understand this word as here used by him. The 
Saviour said, "The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth" ; 
but, indeed, she was dead, else there had been no miracle. 
Are we going to understand the Saviour as meaning to 
affirm that she was not really dead ? He was only using 
that word in an unusual sense. The apostle tells us God 
is not ashamed to be called our God. Is the Almighty 
capable of being ashamed, or does Paul make an unmean- 
ing assertion ? 

But we shall be told all these are only figures of speech. 
If that be so, then why is not Genesis ii. 7 another figure 
of speech? And are we to build doctrine upon a mere 
figurative expression, and that onlv once used in the whole 
Bible ? 



664 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES 



I here append some extracts of a letter to me from Dr. 
Woodrow, of date March 18, 1898, which should interest 
the reader, as showing precisely what he understood by 
teaching "the relation or connection between the scrip- 
tures and natural science." 

Evolution had not been much discussed before I came to Colum- 
bia; but I always briefly set forth the views of Lamarck and the 
Vestiges of Creation fairly, and gave my reasons for not accepting 
them. So. in later years,, in the Seminary, long before 1884, I dis- 
cussed the subject of evolution, giving my opinion at the close of 
each discussion that the reasons in its favor were insufficient. But 
for years I taught that it made no difference to us, as believers in 
the Bible, whether it was true or not ; that the Bible, rightly under- 
stood, was silent on the subject. 

While preparing the address I had consented to deliver in 1884, 
I of course reviewed the whole matter most carefully for months. I 
was more fully convinced than ever that the Bible is silent, and that 
it therefore makes not the least difference whether we accept evolu- 
tion as true or reject it as foolishly absurd. But at the same time, 
the evidence forced me to change my opinion that it was not true to 
the opinion that it is probably true. That is the change I refer to 
in my address; that, and that alone. 

I now regard the doctrine, as defined in my address, as established 
as completely as the doctrine of gravitation. And I see more and 
more clearly the complete silence of the Bible on this and many 
kindred subjects on which it has been supposed to speak plainly. 



Here ends abruptly the work that engaged the last two 
years of the writer's life. Alost assiduously did he strive 
to finish what he had mapped out as the work he had to do. 
But God, in his inscrutable wisdom, had predetermined 
otherwise, and so the chapter on the "Revised Book of 
Discipline" will never be written, nor that part on "'Provi- 
dential Dealings," which was so near his heart, because 
he wanted his children and his grandchildren to know 
how goodness and mercy had followed him all the days of 
his life, and when all his means of support were swept 
away by a failure that involved great loss to his whole 
family connection, just at that particular time a legacy 



CONCLUSION. 



665 



came to his wife so unexpectedly, which proved the prom- 
ise that "to him who hath left house, or parents, or breth- 
ren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, 
shall receive manifold more in this present time and in 
the world to come life everlasting." 

With failing sight, he depended greatly on others for 
aid in this work, but with wonderful energy and execu- 
tion, he accomplished nearly the whole of what he wished 
so ardently to do. Those who watched around his conch 
wished they could hear his voice speaking in anticipation 
of the joys they knew awaited him; but this he did not 
refer to, except to say, in an early stage of his sickness, 
"In either event, it is all right." His life was a sufficient 
testimony to his faith in God. Oftentimes he would be 
heard to say, "Master, Master, come quickly, come to- 
day;" and "shorten these days of suffering." And so, 
knowing how he dreaded a long illness, and having often 
heard him say he felt as did Bishop Elliott on that sub- 
ject, and it was his daily prayer to be spared a long, lin- 
gering illness, Ave who stood there with uplifted eyes saw 
him ascending to heaven, with a kind of joyful feeling. 
His "spirit is with Christ ;" and our hope is in God. 



APPENDIX A. 



The following particulars are taken from a statement 
published by the A. B. C. F. M. of the condition of their 
missions among the Armenians in the year 1896. It 
seems to me these are very splendid results of a work of 
only three-score or more of years under circumstances in 
many respects adverse. 

Missions of the A. B. C. F. M. in Turkey. 

These missions are three in number, viz. : 
The Western Turkey Mission, with stations at Con- 
stantinople, Brusa, Smyrna, Trebizond, Marsovan, Csesa- 
rea and Sivas, and one hundred and four out-stations; 
American missionaries residing at three of the out- 
stations. 

The Central Turkey Mission, with stations at Aintab 
and Marash, and forty-five out-stations; American mis- 
sionaries residing at four of the out-stations. 

The Eastern Turkey Mission, with stations at Bitlis, 
Erzroom, Ilarpoot, Mardin and Van, and one hundred 
and nineteen out-stations. 

In these three Armenian missions there are about one 
hundred and forty-three missionaries, of whom about one 
hundred are female missionary assistants. 

The property owned by the board, and held in trust 
oy its missionaries in Turkey, chiefly consisting of school 
and chapel buildings and residences, with their sites and 
general equipments, represents a value of about $650,000. 

The missionary work has four chief regular depart- 
ments, viz., the Publication, the Educational, the Evan- 
gelistic and the Medical work; also an occasional, and 
often most important department, viz., that of Relief, in 
times of famine, pestilence, or persecution. 

The work is prosecuted in the use, chiefly, of four na- 



668 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



tive languages, viz., the Armenian, the Turkish, the Bul- 
garian and the Greek; while English is largely used in 
the colleges, seminaries and high schools. 

About one-half of the whole number of these mission- 
aries to the Armenians are preaching the gospel ; of the 
remainder, three, that is to say, one to each of the three 
missions, are employed in translating and press work; 
several more are medical missionaries, and the rest are 
professors in the colleges and seminaries of the missions. 

The business transactions of the mission treasurer 
cover more than a quarter of a million dollars a year in 
ordinary times, while the amount, the current year, will 
reach fully half a million, owing to the relief work. 

I. The issues of the press include four weekly and four 
monthly papers, Sunday-school lessons in four languages, 
school books, commentaries, and a large number of tracts 
covering a wide range of subjects. Of these there were 
printed, in 1891, in Armenian, 1,283 pages, 76,245 
copies; in Armeno-Turkish, 1,650 pages, 63,092 copies. 

The several versions and editions of the Bible circu- 
lated in the various languages by the Bible societies were 
translated and put through the press by missionaries of 
the board, aided by competent native scholars. 

II. Educational Work: Robert College is on an inde- 
pendent foundation, and not included in the list below. 

In the three missions there are three theological semi- 
naries, and forty-eight colleges and high schools for both 
sexes. 

Of the five colleges, two are for boys and two for girls, 
while one is for both boys and girls, the work being con- 
ducted in separate departments. These colleges are the 
American College for Girls in Scutari (Constantinople), 
the Harpoot Euphrates College, the Central Turkey Col- 
lege at Aintab, Anatolia College at Marsovan, and the 
College for Girls at ^larash. 

About half the high schools are of really high grade, 
under the direct care of American college graduates. The 
others are rather grammar than high schools, under na- 
tive control and instruction, containing promise of rapid 
growth, provided the condition of the country permits 
their successful continuance. 



APPENDIX A. 



669 



The number of pupils in these higher schools, accord- 
ing to the last report, is 2,576, about equally divided be- 
tween the sexes. 

In the common schools, now generally under native 
control, there are 16,035 pupils, and there are 1,862 per- 
sons under instruction, not in schools. Total under in- 
struction in the three missions, 20,496. The whole num- 
ber of native teachers is 56£ 

III. Medical work in these missions has not had so 
large a place as in some other missions of the board. 
Medical missionaries, in the earlier years, formed classes 
of pupils in medicine, who generally completed their 
studies in schools in the United States or Great Britain ; 
and the number of competent native physicians is now 
large. At Aintab, a well-organized hospital, as well as 
other medical work, is now carried on, while at Csesarea, 
Mardin, and Van, hospital work has been successfully 
commenced. 

IV. Evangelistic Work and the Churches : This work 
has always been regarded as of supreme importance, and 
has enlisted a large part of the missionary force. It is 
also the work to be earliest and most fully passed over 
into native hands, as regards responsible administration 
and control. The smaller churches still receive aid from 
the board. The present number of churches is 125, of 
members, 12,787. 

The places for stated preaching are about three hun- 
dred, the congregations amounting in general to some 
thirty thousand people, ordained native preachers nearly 
one hundred, unordained preachers about the same num- 
ber. 

.N"ative contributions in 1894: for all purposes, i. e., 
church, school, and general benevolence, were $67,237. 

Thousands of non-Protestants attend our schools and 
colleges, and come to our places of worship. Tens of 
thousands of persons from the different races and creeds 
continually read our publications. Hundreds of thou- 
sands of destitute persons this very year are aided to food 
and clothing, and while overwhelmed by unexampled and 
immeasurable calamity, are pointed to the consolations 



670 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



of the gospel in connection with relief work, largely ad- 
ministered by the hands of missionaries and their agents. 

Supplementary. 

Christian Work by Americans and their Native Asso- 
ciates in Constantinople. 

The principal centres are The Bible House, Robert 
College, the American College for Girls, and the Woman's 
Board Mission House at Gedih Pasha in the city, with 
similar houses at Hasskeny and at Scutari. 

The Bible House. 

The Bible House is a group of three buildings in the 
heart of the city, costing a trifle under $100,000. It is 
the centre of the work of the American Bible Society r 
Rev. M. Bowen, agent, and of the missions of the Amer- 
ican Board, W. W. Peet, Esq., treasurer. The British 
and Foreign Bible Society also has its work centred here. 
Books, bound and unbound, are always stored in the Bible 
House, of value exceeding $150,000. 

In a commodious chapel on the premises, divine service 
is held every Sunday at 9 o'clock a. m. in Greek, at 
10:30 a. m. in Turkish, and at 3 p. m. the Armenian 
Y. M. C. A. holds its meeting. Native pastors conduct 
the morning services, and a layman leads the afternoon 
meeting. 

Other Sunday services are as follows: Sunday-school 
at Gedik Pasha under the care of the ladies of the W. B. 
M. at noon, Sunday-school at Hasskeny at 3. p. m., Sun- 
day-school at Scutari at 3 p. m. 

Preaching services at the Dutch Chapel, Pera, 9 
o'clock a. m. in Armenian ; at the Swedish Chapel, Pera, 
9 a. m. in Greek; at Scutari, 9 a. m. in Armenian; at 
Hasskeny, 10 a. m. in Armenian ; at Gedik Pasha, 10 a. m. 
in Armenian ; at Koom-Kapoo, 5 p. m. in Greek ; 6 p. M. 
in Turkish ; at President's House, Robert College, 3 p. m. 
in Armenian; at Boyadjikeny, 8 p. m. in Armenian; at 
Robert College, 10:45 a. m. in English; at the College 
for Girls, 11:30 a. m. in English; at Bebek, 11 :30 a. m, 
in English. 



APPENDIX A. 



671 



Robert College. 

Rev. George Washburn, D. D., President. 

This institution was established by the munificence of 
Mr. C. R. Robert, of 2s"ew York, and is now in its thirty- 
third year. It has property and endowments amounting 
to about four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Its 
pupils the current year number two hundred and twenty- 
two. There are eight professors and fifteen other in- 
structors. Its pupils come chiefly from the the three na- 
tionalities, Armenian, Bulgarian, and Greek, and its in- 
fluence in all these nationalities has been very great. 

The American College for Girls at Scutari. 
Miss Mary M. Pat rich, President. 

This college looks back over twenty-five years of edu- 
cational work. It began as a high school, known as "The 
Home," in 1871, and received its college charter in 1890. 
It has sent out one hundred and eight alunmse of nine 
nationalities, viz., Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, English, 
American, Israelite, Turkish, Danish, and Albanian. 
Sixty of these have engaged in teaching, and several 
others have entered upon various independent careers. 
The college has sent out also a large number of teachers, 
not numbered among its alumna?. The college possesses 
an Trade from H. I. M., the Sultan. 

The college offers three full courses of study, scientific, 
literary, and classical. The faculty numbers six Ameri- 
can professors, and fifteen other instructors. The num- 
ber of pupils the current year is one hundred and seventy- 
five. 

\V0RK OF THE LADIES REPRESENTING THE W. B. M. 

At each of the centres of the work of the W. B. M., viz. r 
at Gedik Pasha, at Hasskeny and at Scutari, are large 
Sunday-schools, and flourishing day schools with two or 
more departments — seven teachers and two hundred pu- 
pils at Gedik Pasha — while household visitation, general 
and woman's prayer-meetings, personal work and evening 
schools, are parts of the efforts of the seven ladies engaged 



672 



MY LIFE AND TIMES. 



in this work. The Kindergarten at Hasskeny has nearly 
fifty pupils, and is almost self-supporting. At Scutari 
instruction is free, is designed to reach the poor, and the 
number instructed in one or more classes is one hundred 
and seventy. The Koom-Kapoo Rest is under the care 
of the ladies at Gedik Pasha. 

Educational Work at Adabazar and Bardezag. 

The large village of Bardezag and the town of Adaba- 
zar are hardly within the Constantinople radius, although 
in the same station. Two of our most prosperous educa- 
tional institutions are found at these places, viz., the 
Bithynia High School for Boys, with one hundred and 
twenty-seven pupils, at Bardezag, under the care of Rev. 
R. Chambers ; and the High School for Girls, at Adaba- 
zar, a successful native enterprise, with seventy-nine pu- 
pils, under the care of Miss Laura Farnham, with two 
American associates. 

Testimony from Two or My Old Colleagues. 

My old colleague, Dr. Hamlin, writes me from Lexing- 
ton, Mass., of date October 18, 1897, concerning the meet- 
ing of the American Board the preceding September: 
"We had a most excellent meeting at New Haven. There 
were never so many conversions, never so many revivals, 
never so much spontaneous effort of the native churches 
— all which is very encouraging. In the bloody fields of 
Turkey, missionary work was never so prosperous in 
spiritual results. Schools and churches full,. Gregorians 
[such is the name of the old Armenian Church from the 
name of their apostle, Gregory the Enlightener] and 
Protestants mingling without any signs of difference. 
The Armenians, Protestant and Gregorian, are sternly 
resolved that Sultan Hamid shall not relegate them to 
ignorance and barbarism." 

My old colleague, Dr. Elias Riggs, of Constantinople, 
wrote to me thus, April 7, 1897 : "We have already seen 
wonderfully good results from the awful trial through 
which the Armenians are passing. Think of a Protestant 
pastor in Aintab preaching statedly in a Gregorian 



APPENDIX B. 



673 



•church to congregations of from fifteen hundred to three 
thousand, and of Gregorians and Protestants in Oorfa 
and many other places uniting in the management of 
schools, orphanages, Sunday-schools and public worship, 
and the Armenian Patriarch and the Catholicos of Etch- 
miadzin acknowledging that the Armenians consider the 
Protestants as their best friends." 



APPENDIX B. 

In the year 1895, Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, of New 
York, published a work entitled The Armenian Crisis in 
Turkey, The Massacre of 1894, its Antecedents and Sig- 
nificance, by Frederick Davis Greene, M. A., for several 
years a resident of Armenia. A portion of this volume 
consists of eighteen letters written from the interior of 
Armenia, before and during and immediately after the 
massacre. The author of this volume thus introduces 
them into his volume: "These letters were written by 
men who subjected themselves to personal danger by put- 
ting such statements on paper and sending them through 
the Turkish mails. Several of the documents have gotten 
through Turkey by circuitous routes, in some instances 
having been sent by special messenger to Persia, and so 
on to this country. Others were never risked in the Turk- 
ish mails, but have come through the British post-office at 
Constantinople." 

It must be borne in mind that no writer was an eye- 
witness of the actual massacre ; nor could he have been, 
inasmuch as the whole region was surrounded by a mili- 
tary cordon during the massacre, and for months after. 
The letters are largely based on the testimony of refugees 
from that region, or of Kurds and soldiers who partici- 
pated in the butchery, and who had no hesitation in 
speaking about the affair in public or private until long- 
after, when the prospect of a European investigation 
sealed their lips. Much of the evidence is, therefore, 
essentially first-hand, having been obtained from eye- 
witnesses by parties in the vicinity at the time, who are 



674 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



impartial, thoroughly experienced in sifting Oriental tes- 
timony, familiar with the Turkish and Armenian lan- 
guages, and of the highest veracity. !N"o one letter would 
have much force if taken alone, for it might be a large 
report of a small matter; but these sixteen letters are 
written independently of one another, at different times, 
and from seven different cities widely apart, five of them 
forming a circle around the scene of destruction. The 
evidence is cumulative and overwhelming. 

There is absolute unanimity to this extent, that a 
gigantic and indescribably horrible massacre of Armen- 
ian men, women and children did actually take place in 
the Sassoun and neighboring regions about September 
1, 1894, and that, too, at the hands of Kurdish troops 
armed by the Sultan of Turkey, as well as of regular sol- 
diers sent under orders from the same source. What 
those orders were will probably never transpire. That 
they were executed under the personal direction of high 
Turkish military officers is clear. There can also be no 
doubt — for the official notice from the palace was printed 
in the Constantinople papers in November last — that 
Zekki Pasha, commander of the Fourth Army Corps, who 
led the regular troops in the work of extermination, has 
since been specially honored by a decoration from the 
Sultan, who was also pleased to send silk banners to the 
four leading Kurdish chiefs by a special messenger. 

To give the reader an adequate idea of these unques- 
tionably veritable testimonies, I here append extracts 
from Letter 6, Letter 8, and Letter 9. 

From Letter "No. 6. 

"At first the Kourds were set on, and the troops kept 
out of sight. The villagers put to the fight, and thinking 
they had only the Kourds to do with, repulsed them on 
several occasions. The Kourds were unwilling to do more 
unless the troops assisted. Some of the troops assumed 
Kourdish dress, and helped them in the fight with more 
success. Small companies of troops entered several vil- 
lages, saying they had come to protect them as loyal sub- 
jects, and were quartered among the houses. In the night 



APPEXDIX B. 



675 



they arose and slew the sleeping villagers, man, woman, 
and child. 

By this time those in other villages were beginning to 
feel that extermination was the object of the government, 
and desperately determined to sell their lives as dearly as 
possible. And then began a campaign of bntchery that 
lasted some twenty-three days, or roughly, from the mid- 
dle of August to the middle of September. The Ferik 
Pasha [Marshal Zekki Pasha] , who came post-haste from 
Erzingan, read the Sultan's firman for extermination, 
and then, hanging the document on his breast, exhorted 
the soldiers not to be found wanting in their duty. On 
the last day of August, the anniversary of the Sultans 
accession, the soldiers were especially urged to distin- 
guish themselves, and they made it the day of the greatest 
slaughter. Another marked day occurred a few days 
earlier, being marked by the occurrence of a wonderful 
meteor. 

"Xo distinctions were made between persons or vil- 
lages as to whether they were loyal and had paid their 
taxes or not. The orders were to make a clean sweep. A 
priest and some leading men from one village went out to 
meet an officer, taking in their hands their tax receipts, 
declaring their loyalty, and begging for mercy ; but the- 
village was surrounded, and all human beings put to the 
bayonet. A large and strong man, the chief of one vil- 
lage, was captured by the Kourds, who tied him, threw 
him on the ground, and squatting around him, stabbed 
him to pieces. 

"At Galogozan many young men were tied hand and 
foot, laid in a row, covered with brushwood and burned 
alive. Others were seized and hacked to death piecemeal. 
At another village a priest and several leading men were 
captured, and promised release if they would tell where 
others had fled, but after telling, all but the priest were 
killed. A chain was put around the priest's neck, and 
pulled from opposite sides till he was several times 
choked and revived, after which several bayonets were 
planted upright, and he raised in the air and let fall upon 
them. 

"The men of one village, when fleeing, took the women 



676 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



and children, some five hundred in number, and placed 
them in a sort of grotto in a ravine. After several days 
the soldiers found them, and butchered those who had not 
died of hunger. 

"Sixty young women and girls were selected from one 
village and placed in a church, when the soldiers were 
ordered to do with them as they liked, after which they 
were butchered. 

"In another village fifty choice women were set aside 
and urged to change their faitli and become lianums in 
Turkish harems, but they indignantly refused to deny 
Christ, preferring the fate of their fathers and husbands. 
People were crowded into houses which were then set on 
fire. In one instance a little boy ran out of the flames, 
but was caught on a bayonet and thrown back. 

"Children were frequently held up by the hair and cut 
in two, or had their jaws torn apart ; older children were 
pulled apart by their legs. A handsome, newly-wedded 
couple fled to a hilltop ; soldiers followed, and told them 
they were pretty, and would be spared if they would 
accept Islam ; but the thought of the horrible death they 
knew would follow did not prevent them from confessing 
Christ. 

"The last stand took place on Mount Andoke [south of 
Moosh] , where some thousand persons had sought refuge. 
The Kourds were sent in relays to attack them, but for 
ten or fifteen days were unable to get at them. The sol- 
diers also directed the fire of their mountain guns on 
them, doing some execution. Finally, after the besieged 
nad been without food for several days, and their ammu- 
nition was exhausted, the troops succeeded in reaching 
the summit without any loss, and let scarcely a man 
escape. 

"Now all turned their attention to those who had been 
driven into the Talvoreez district. Three or four thou- 
sand of the besieged were left in this small plain. When 
they saw themselves thickly surrounded on all sides by 
Turks and Kourds, they raised their hands to heaven 
with an agonizing moan for deliverance. They were 
thinned out by rifle shots, and the remainder were slaugh- 
tered with bayonets and swords, till a veritable river of 



APPENDIX B. 



677 



blood flowed from the heaps of the slain. And so ended 
the massacre.' 7 

From Letter No. 8. 

"The Armenians, oppressed by Kourds and Turks, 
said, 'We can't pay taxes to both Kourds and the govern- 
ment.' Plundered and oppressed by the Kourds, they re- 
sisted them ; there were some killed. Then false reports 
were sent to Constantinople that the Armenians were in 
arms, in rebellion. Orders were sent to the Mushire 
[commander-in-chief] at Erzingan to exterminate them 
root and branch. The orders read before the army col- 
lected in haste from all the chief cities of Eastern Turkey 
was, 'Whoever spares man, woman, or child is disloyal.' 

"The region was surrounded by soldiers of the army, 
and twenty thousand Kourds also are said to have been 
massed there. Then they advanced upon the centre, driv- 
ing in the people like a flock of sheep, and continued thus 
to advance for days. No quarter was given, no mercy 
shown. Men, women, and children shot down or butch- 
ered like sheep. Probably when they were set upon in 
this way some tried to save their lives and resisted in 
self-defence. Many who could fled in all directions, but 
the majority were slain. The most probable estimate is 
fifteen thousand killed, - thirty-five villages plundered, 
razed, burnt. 

"Women were outraged and then butchered; a priest 
taken to the roof of his church and hacked to pieces; 
young men piled in with wood, saturated with kerosene, 
and set on fire ; a large number of women and girls col- 
lected in church, kept for days, violated by the brutal sol- 
diers, and then murdered. It is said the number was so 
large that the blood flowed out of the church door. Three 
soldiers contended over a beautiful girl. They wanted to 
preserve her, but she too was killed. 

"Every effort is being made and will be made to falsify 
(excuse the blots, emblematic of the horrible story) the 
facts, and pull the wool over the eyes of European gov- 
ernments. But the bloody tale will finally be known, the 
most horrible, it seems to me, that the nineteenth century 
has known. As a confirmation of the report, the other 



678 



MY LIFE ASD TIMES. 



day several hundred soldiers were returning from the 
seat of war, and at a village near us one was heard to say 
that he alone with his own hand had killed thirty preg- 
nant women. Some who seem to have some shame for 
their atrocious deeds say, 'What could we do; we were 
under orders V " 

From Letter 2s o. 9. 

"The soldiers who went from here talk quite freely 
about matters at Sassoun. A. heard one talk the other 
day. He said the work was mostly finished before the 
E. soldiers got there. There was great spoil — flocks, 
herds, household goods, etc. — but their chief work was to 
dispose of the heaps and heaps of the dead. The stench 
was awful. They were gathered into the still standing- 
houses and burned with the houses. They say that the 
work of destruction w T as wrought by the Hamedieh, i. e., 
the newly-organized Kourdish regiments. Those regi- 
ments are one of the chief elements of danger to the coun- 
try now." 

Kow the American missionaries reside at twenty dif- 
ferent points, from Constantinople on the west, to Van on 
the borders of Persia, nearly a thousand miles to the east, 
and from Trebizond on the Black Sea to Adana and Tar- 
sus on the Mediterranean. All of the points occupied by 
them except five are in the interior of the country, iso- 
lated to a considerable distance from each other, with no 
means of rapid intercommunication, and with almost no 
consular protection from either this country or Great 
Britain. 

Early in October, 1894, beginning at Constantinople 
and sweeping over the land almost to Persia, spreading 
in all directions down to Mesopotamia and to the Medi- 
terranean, rolled the awful tide of massacre and death, its 
terrible fury seeming to centre chiefly at the points where 
the missionaries resided, and many of them lost every- 
thing, not even a change of clothing being left. The 
homes of all were crowded with refugee Armenians, and 
sometimes were then set on fire. Mission premises were 



APPENDIX B. 



679 



speedily converted also into temporary hospitals, and all 
things were shared in common with the Armenians, even 
the awful danger that overhung them. These horrors con- 
tinued for nearly two months. 

"The question arises/' continues Frederick Davis 
Greene, "how did the missionaries feel, and how did they 
behave through all this period?" I answer with two or 
three statements as a sample of the whole. 

The Eev. C. F. Gates, president of Euphrates Col- 
lege, Harpoot, wrote thus November 13th: "For three 
days we have looked death in the face hourly. We have 
passed by the mouth of the bottomless pit, and the flames 
came out against us, but not one in our company flinched 
or faltered. We simply trusted in the Lord and went on. 
We cannot trust any one, but we do not want to be ordered 
out of the country. If we abandon the Christians, they 
are lost. . . ." Some weeks later he writes: "Many 
letters express the desire that we may go home, but we are 
not going to abandon our post. ... I would not ex- 
change the peace and assurance of God's favor and sup- 
port we now enjoy for the highest place in America. We 
may not live to see the consummation of God's purpose, 
but he will accomplish his plans, and they will be good. 
Threats abound, and the times are critical, but in all these 
things we are more than conquerors through him that 
loved us." 

Rev. H. N". Barnum, Harpoot, has been a missionary in 
Turkey for thirty-eight years. He met the officers in the 
door of the college building, in which, at the time of the 
massacre, were gathered nearly five hundred Christian 
refugees, and told them that the Americans would remain 
there to the last, even if the building was burned. They 
were all saved. In a letter dated November 15th, he says : 
"As I have been prominent, I have drawn hostility to 
myself, and I hear that special threats have been made. 
But as long as the Lord has work for me he will spare my 
life." On January 22d he wrote : "Oh ! how sick at heart 
we become every day. Our friends express great sym- 
pathy for us in what they suppose to be our physical 
privations and discomforts. That is nothing. It is the 
physical suffering which is always he fore us; the mental 




680 



MY LIFE AXD TIMES. 



distress of the people, who, to save life and family, have 
prof essed Mohammedanism ; the ruin of the work 
throughout the whole field and the land; and the dark, 
uncertain future upon which not one ray of light shines r 
except through faith in God — this is what makes us suf- 
fer. It is almost too much for us to bear at times. Yet 
the Lord gives us daily strength for daily needs." 

Miss Shattuck, who has been twenty-three years in 
Turkey, was alone at Oorfa, a three-days' journey from 
the nearest Americans or Europeans. In the two ma— a- 
cres that swept over that city, from four thousand to five 
thousand were slain. After the first attack, permission 
was secured by friends from the government for a safe 
escort for her to go to Aintab, a place of greater safety. 
She refused to go, and the following is her response of 
January 13, 1896: "During the massacre our house was 
full — two hundred and forty found refuge. We began to 
have refugees Monday and Tuesday, and all our house 
and school-room are full of widows and orphans and 
wounded. How willingly would I have died could my 
death have spared parents to their children.'' 

To all these appalling statements on the high authority 
of E. D. Greene, let me add what Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, my 
old colleague, writes me September 22, 1897: "I listen 
constantly to the loud cry of the slaughtered Armenians. 
O, Lord ! holy and true, how long dost thou not judge 
and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth \ 
He will avenge them, but a thousand years are as one 
day with him. TVe are impatient. He is infinitely pa- 
tient." 

But let me now ask what did the Christian powers of 
Europe do to deliver the poor Armenian martyrs from the 
rage of their Moslem persecutors ? Xothing whatever. 
What prevented ? They feared that any such step by any 
one of them would set them all to war with one another ! 
Lord Salisbury's cry at the head of them all was, the 
peace of Europe must be preserved. Of him Bismarck is 
reported to have made this significant remark, they hav- 
ing met somewhere in some conference: "Salisbury is a 
man of wood coated with sheet-iron." Dr. Hamlin writes 
the same date as above : "Poor Salisbury is unequal to his 



APPENDIX B. 



681 



position. He has succumbed to Germany and Russia." 
Had Oliver Cromwell but been in Salisbury's place, how 
different had been the position of England ! The reader 
will remember how quickly he put an end to the persecu- 
tion of the Waldenses. 

The reader should bear in mind that these Moslem mas- 
sacres of 18 94-' 97 are not the only ones recorded in the 
history of Turkey. Similar atrocities were visited upon 
the Greeks in 1822 ; upon the Nestor ians in 1850 ; upon 
the Syrians in 1860; upon the Cretans in 1867; upon 
the Bulgarians in 1876 ; upon the Yezidees in 1892, and 
the Armenians in 1894. The spirit of Islam is still that 
of Mohammed, "The Koran or the Sword." 



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